After a delightfully short and trouble-free integration period, we’re pleased to announce that the Best eCommerce site in Ireland now has the best online payment processing on the market to boot. Realex Payments now handles the processing of Visa, Mastercard and Laser on curiouswines.ie, to offer you the safest and fastest way of buying wine online.

Certified and approved by the country’s leading financial institutions and one of only a few companies in Europe to be accredited with AIS (Account Information Security) by VISA, Realex process billions of euro per annum for thousands of merchants including some of the largest companies in Europe. As secure, reliable payment processing is of primary importance to our customers and our business, we’re delighted to welcome Realex on board.

As mentioned too, with Realex you can now (finally!) pay for your wine online the fast, handy way with Laser, providing access to your cash quicker than even we can deliver your wine!

Eight months on from picking up Ireland’s Best Commercial Website at the Digital Media awards, Curious Wines is at it again, picking up Best eCommerce/Services Website at the Irish Web Awards. Curious Mike, his lovely wife, Curious Mary, and the very talented Sabrina Dent, made the trip north to Dublin’s Radisson SAS for Ireland’s most prestigious web awards ceremony.

We faced some stiff competition (sincerest congrats to all those shortlisted), but we managed to walk away trophy in hand, with a real sense of pride and joy. As well as Sabrina, Mike and I must acknowledge the hard work of Katherine Nolan (@dochara), who does all the amazing stuff at the back-end that makes the site so easy to get around. So ladies, from the bottom of our hearts - thank you for making this site Ireland’s best wine website.

Other winners on our radar are regular contributors to this blog, Look and Taste, who picked up best videocaster. Sabrina’s husband won best new web application for Kildare Street, so well done to John, and to all the other entrants who are continuing to raise the bar in Ireland’s tech and service industries.

A final word of thanks to headline sponsors Realex Payments, Best eCommerce category sponsors CyberCom, and most of all the inimitable Damien Mulley who puts on the best (and dare we say it, most authentic) awards ceremony in the industry.

All winners on the night can be viewed here, and thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook for your warm congrats, we’re overwhelmed with the love!

Keep watching this space, as Ireland’s best wine website is about to get even better.

Following on from our making the shortlist for Best Ecommerce Site and Most Beautiful Website at the Irish Web Awards this coming weekend, our Twitter feed was peppered with lovely little love notes:

• @Grayzie: Well deserved nominations. If you don’t win, those peeps need their heads checked!
• @davidmcavinue: You must be running out of space on the mantlepiece. Well done!
• @brianclayton: Congratulations on the well deserved nominations there gents!

So we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for a gong and a reason to pop open a bottle of bubbly on Saturday night- thanks for the good wishes! Speaking of wishes, there’s nothing to warm a wine seller’s heart like the sound of happy customers who’s only regret is that they didn’t buy more:

Had a lovely evening in with The Last Stand. Only sorry I got 2 bottles and not the full box.

And other nice things to read from more lovely customers:

• @Omaniblog: Curious Wines are great to deal with. I can swap the one bottle I didn’t enjoy for another - and they have so many good ones at greatprices.
• @grapes_of_sloth: I started off with your Spatlese Pinot Blanc 2005 - beautiful.

Beautiful indeed. Thanks for the love, guys