Brought up in the hotel industry in the West of Ireland and having managed her family's hotel for some years in the 1960's, marriage and family matters brought her to Dublin and to her current position as Research and Development Manager at Febvre and Company, one of the leading family-owned fine wine importers in Ireland. She developed their portfolio to include thousands of wines from some of the world's most prestigeous producers.
Monica was very involved in the early days of the Irish farmhouse cheese renaissance in the 1980's and owned and ran The Cheeseboard Ltd., a speciality Cheese and Wine Shop and cheese wholesale and import/export business in Dublin from 1984 until 1995 when the wine bug took over! Her job now is sourcing wines for Febvre and their sister company in France, quality control, supplier liaison, editorial and training which involves a lot of travel.
For eleven years during that period she also wine-guided and tour-managed with Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours from time to time. So between all these occupations she has visited somewhere in the region of four hundred wineries around the world and led around three thousand people on wine tours. She writes the Irish contributions to Meininger's Wine Business International and contributes to other Irish magazines and newspapers on a free-lance basis as well as doing occasional radio interviews. She has been a Wine Judge for years at the IWSC and previously the IWC, as well as a Cheese Judge at the RDS Dublin and Nantwich Cheese Shows and Paris Agricultural Show.
Monica is also a founder member of Slow Food Ireland and interested in all aspects of the food, wine and tourism industries.
Monica holds the WSET Diploma since 1988 and although she passed the theory part of the MW in 1991, she never converted to a full pass in spite of being the eternal student! But she had fun doing it! She is a grandmother with five children and fifteen grandchildren and is known among her Italian wine suppliers as "La Nonna Volante" - the Flying Granny. |
