The Blue Haven is offering Curious Wines’ social media friends the chance to win 1 night’s B&B for 2 with dinner at its stylish and centrally-located Kinsale hotel. To enter, simply caption the image below on any of the online platforms mentioned below. Please note (and sorry to be needy) that you have to ‘follow’, ‘like’ or otherwise validate us to be eligible to win

Facebook : We’ll post the picture, you write your caption as a comment.

Twitter : Tweet your caption to @CuriousWines using the hashtag #CuriousCaption.

Pinterest : Picture is on the Curious Caption board, here ; you caption in the comments.

Instagram (curiouswines): Smartphone only. Check our feed for the image and caption as a comment.

This here blog : Write your caption right here in the (you guessed it) comments.

We’ll pick the best (or least worst!) caption at the start of June and contact the lucky winner shortly afterwards.

Keep it clean, and GOOD LUCK!

Celebrating 12 successive years on Gordon Ramsay‘s list of house wines, July’s competition features your chance to try the brand new vintages of the brilliant Château Bauduc.

The 2011 Bordeaux Blanc Sec is a crisp, dry white, made from the 25 acres of Sauvignon Blanc vines that surround the Château. House white at Gordon Ramsay’s three Michelin star restaurant, a ‘special selection’ of Rick Stein’s for a decade and, more recently, the prestige house white at the Hotel du Vin. ‘De-lish’ said Rick Stein when he tasted it in March 2012.

From a great Bordeaux vintage, the 2009 Clos des Quinze is classic Bordeaux – an elegant structure, supple tannins, a medium to full body, and a whiff of cedar with ripe dark fruit. Served at the Gordon Ramsay restaurants since the 2005 vintage, and Hotel du Vin since the 2007, Rick Stein tried this in March as a follow-up to the 2008 on his wine list and loved it.

Not content with that, we’ve managed to acquire a very swanky Bauduc apron (modelled by Gavin himself, below, with Mike) on a recent visit to the Château, and the newly updated Bordeaux by Oz Clarke, described by Decanter as there being ‘no better introduction to the world’s most dazzling wine region’.

It’s all a bit of a no-brainer, really – you want.

To win the Brilliant Bordeaux prize pack, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our July newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.

Following Mike’s jolly in the Languedoc – sorry, I mean of course, ‘work trip’ – and with thousands of us heading to France for our holiers, June’s competition will have you pointed in the right direction for your own bon voyage of sun, food and wine.

Cadogan Guides’ Languedoc-Roussillon 2012 edition explores the very best that this diverse area of France has to offer including the famous cassoulet and sausages in the ville rose of Toulouse, the medieval splendour of Carcassonne, lagoons full of oysters and flamingos, and houseboats lazing down the Canal du Midi, all punctuated by Roman ruins, Cathar castles and Gothic cathedrals. Oh, and they even tell you about the region’s 19 AOC wines (although we suggest you don’t try to sample them all in one day!).

And if the wine section isn’t sufficient, hopefully Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book will prove an adequate supplement. Now in its 35th edition, the 2012 edition conveniently features a new colour supplement on the wines of the South of France.

To help you on your bonne journée, we’ve included the AA’s Touring Map to the region, a super smart Jeep bumbag for your travel documents and valuables, and (from the wisdom of experience) an ‘Are we there yet?’ travel game for the kids – handy for that long car journey, or while you scoot in for the odd degustation on the way

Finally, just in case you don’t actually make it to the Languedoc this summer, we’ve two bottles of Moulin de Gassac to sample while you plan next year’s trip.

To win the Bon Voyage prize pack, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our June newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.

It’s “Love the Languedoc” for the months of May and June and we’ve one of our tastiest prizes ever up for grabs in our May competition.

Described by Gault & Millau as “a Lafite in the Languedoc”, “the only Grand Cru of the Midi” by Hugh Johnson and “Exceptional” by Robert Parker, Mas de Daumas Gassac have been the benchmark for Languedoc wines for over 30 years. Their flagship Mas de Daumas Gassac Grand Cru was declared “one of the top 10 wines in the world” by Michael Broadbent.

With the new vintages – 2010 in the red and 2011 in the white – landing this week, we’ve a bottle of each to give away as part of a “Love the Languedoc” prize pack that also includes Mondovino, the 2004 Cannes Film Festival awardee documenting the family succession struggles of wine dynasties across three continents, and featuring none other than Aimé Guibert, founder and patriarch of Mas de Daumas Gassac. (Aimé’s the gentleman declaring “wine is dead!” in the trailer below.)

Finally, a copy of Rupert Wright’s Notes from the Languedoc, “all you ever wanted to know about the Languedoc, a cultural, historical and contemporary tour de force” according to the Daily Mail, completes a box of goodies that will have you salivating at every sip, frame and page-turn.

To win the Love the Languedoc prize pack, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our May newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.

The vast majority of entries got the correct answer for our Curious Golden Egg Hunt – a contest that involved finding eleven hidden golden eggs around the website, each with a letter printed on them, and then rearranging them to uncover a well known wine region. The answer – Chateauneuf – well done to all those who got it right!

Ten winners who got off the mark first were announced on Tuesday. Well done, guys! But the big prize was drawn this morning. The lucky winner of over €180′s worth of wine was Seamus Reynolds. Congratulations Seamus, our Easter Deluxe Mixed Case will be on its way to you in time for Easter.

A big thanks to all who took part, and for those who didn’t get a prize this time, stay signed up to our monthly newsletter for information on how to play next time. From all of us here at Curious Wines, have a safe and enjoyable Easter break.

Yesterday saw the second Curious Golden Egg Hunt commence with gusto as, at 12.00pm, our newsletter subscribers got first dibs on finding the eleven golden eggs hidden around our website and solving the clue to a famous wine region hidden therein.

The first ten people back with the correct answer each bagged themselves €25 in Curious Wines vouchers to spend online or in our Cork store.

If you didn’t get there quick enough, fret not. Every correct answer received before midnight on Wednesday (5th April) will be put in the draw for an Easter Deluxe Mixed Case, worth over €180, to be delivered in time for Easter.

The ten nimble ninjas who were quickest to respond with the correct answer yesterday were:

Andrea Magnorsky
Brian Clayton
Geraldine O’Donovan
John Carney
Julie Barrett
Micheal O’Fiachra
Miranda Coughlan
Rachel Teodorini
Sabine Piro
Shauna Breen

Congratulations guys, we hope you enjoyed the race through the website. Enjoy your winnings

To play the Curious Golden Egg Hunt and be in with a chance to win the Easter Deluxe Mixed Case, find full instructions on how to enter here.

With Easter almost upon us, April’s competition is our second Curious Golden Egg Hunt, with over €400 worth of wine up for grabs over the next 3 days!

We’ve hidden eleven golden eggs around the website, all nestled discretely in the wine bottle pics on our product pages, and each with a letter printed on them. All you have to do is find the eggs, identify the eleven letters, and rearrange them to uncover a well known wine region.

The first ten people back with the correct answer will each get a €25 voucher to spend how they wish on the Curious Wines website or in-store at our Kinsale Road warehouse. You can put it towards one of our pre-mixed cases, or just pick up a couple of bottles for Easter, how you redeem it is up to you.

Our newsletter subscribers have had a one hour head-start, but if you’re too late to be in the first ten correct answers, fear not.

All correct answers will be put in a barrel for our main prize draw on Thursday morning, when we’ll draw one winner for an Easter Deluxe Mixed Case – over €180 worth of tasty treats to be delivered to your door in time for Easter.

Answers by email only to contests@curiouswines.ie. Please enter your answer in the subject line as we won’t be opening every email received. Sorry to be meanies, but multiple entries will automatically exclude you from the draw (it clogs up our email and just isn’t good sport!). Competition is only open to residents in the Republic of Ireland and must be over 18 years of age.

The golden eggs are waiting to be found, so go, go…

Italy claims more grape varieties than any other country: 350 have been codified and more than 1,000 others are being catalogued and studied. This extraordinary range of grapes and wine styles means that Italy’s potential as a source for diverse and distinguished wines has barely been tapped and is little understood.

Now Patricia Guy brings together the most comprehensive collection of current information about Italian wine today, combining wine information with a host of complimentary food pairings and recipes for delicious meals with each wine.

358 pages in hardback, coffee-table format, with more than 100 full-colour photographs, Wines of Italy: A Complete Guide to the Grape Varieties, Growing Regions and Classifications of Italian Wine is the first book designed to help everyone from consumers to sommeliers explore and understand the kaleidoscopic range of contemporary Italian grape varieties and the wines made from them.

We’ve one copy of Wines of Italy along with two bottles of the more unusual grape varieties from this amazing wine country: a friulano (white) and a refosco (red), from esteemed Veneto estate Poggiobello.

To win, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our March newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.

With 20% off Spain for the month of February, we’ve got paella sorted (again and again and again!) for this month’s competition.

Take one enamelled steel paella pan, 1 large bag of Valencia ‘Bomba’ paella rice, 30 servings of the finest paella spice mix, one pack of Murcia dried red peppers (Ñoras) and one hoop of Longaniza de Leon Picante chorizo, and you’ve the basis of authentic Spanish paella over and over. (You’ll just need to add a few fresh ingredients yourself but we’ll even include the recipe for you!)

Throw in two bottles of our finest paella accompaniments – the Pazo De Monterrey Godello from Galicia and our brand new Namorio Albarino from Rias Biaxas – and you’ve the wine covered for your first two attempts as well.

To win, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our February newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.

It’s a very happy new year from Curious with 20% off Chile and Spain for January and February.

For January’s competition, we thought what better than matching our award-winning Chilean wines with some tasty local recipes.

If your cookbook collection doesn’t contain Chilean, now’s your chance to try something completely different:

The book contains 140 traditional recipes from home chefs and restaurants from across this South American country, spanning a variety of dishes that ranges from spicy salsas and hearty soups to the ubiquitous empanada and desserts such as sweet cream crepes. It includes fairly standard and simple recipes such as Chilean roast chicken and rice, as well as more complex and exotic ones like rhubarb mousse, blood sausage, stuffed meat (you literally have to sew the meat shut), and fried frogs’ legs.

Crikey. Rather fittingly, they’ve also a detailed section on Chile’s more familiar export:

In addition to recommendations for pairing wines with main courses, a special section on wine offers an overview of the wines of Chile, including the names and addresses of Chilean wine companies and the availability of their products.

So, we’ve one copy of the delectable Tasting Chile: A Celebration of Authentic Chilean Foods and Wines in hardback plus two of Santa Alicia’s finest – the Gran Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay – to pair up with your first recipes.

To win, you must be subscribed to the Curious Wines newsletter. We’ll be including a not-so-difficult question and instructions on how to enter in our January newsletter going out soon.

Just missed it? Sign-up here and you’ll automatically get it sent to you.