Ireland is well-known for its fantastic whiskeys, but wine lovers in the country can also find eight Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners where they can explore the great terroirs of the world. Among those is the Best of Award of Excellence–winning wine bar at bottle shop 64 Wine in the Dublin suburb of Glasthule.
Since 2006, 64 Wine has offered hundreds of bottles for sale in its brick-lined, parquet-floored shop, along with sandwiches, gourmet charcuterie and cheeses from its deli and food shop. “I opened [64 Wine] as I felt that there was a gap in the market,” co-owner and general manager Anthony Robineau recalls.
But starting on 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, 64 Wine becomes a wine bar.
What’s Wine Without Small Plates?
Chef Apostol Ionut prepares a European-influenced menu of small plates. For the snacks, think mixed olives, chicken liver parfait and mushrooms on toast. Have a bigger appetite? Try the charcuterie and cheese board options.
Environmentally Friendly Wine in a Brick-Lined Cellar
Co-owner and wine director Gerard Maguire assembled about 1,500 wines for the wine-bar collection, which is largely on display behind glass doors (and on surrounding shop shelves). All bottles sold in the 64 Wine shop are available in the restaurant with an additional $16 corkage fee. The program’s main strengths—France, Italy and Spain—are also key on the list of 22 wines by the glass.
From Northern Italy, expect picks from Soave’s Pieropan, Friuli’s Livio Felluga and Trentino’s Foradori. Looking to France, think Bollinger Champagne, William Fèvre Chablis and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Chassagne-Montrachet. The Spanish selections include Cava, Tempranillo, Mencía and more from wineries like Rafael Palacios and R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia. That’s rounded out by wines from Tuscany, Austria, Germany, Portugal and Australia.
“We began to travel to wine fairs and to vineyards around Europe to meet the people behind the labels,” says Robineau. Over time, he and Maguire realized that many of the wines catching their attention were made organically or biodynamically, and the two started an inventory of eco-friendly wines.
The wine list indicates which wines are natural, biodynamic, organic or sustainable, and it defines these terms for guests. “In 2023, we began a process of only adding wines that have a ‘green’ footprint,” Robineau explains. “This is a difficult goal to achieve but we are duty bound to try.”
64 Wine frequently hosts tastings, like one recent event highlighting wines from Tuscany’s Isole & Olena and Biondi-Santi.
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