Food & Wine Ireland

22/11/2024

It’s a thumbs down for a soggy-bottomed pizza and a poor tiramisu, but a big thumbs up for a crostino and ravioli

18/11/2024

Looking forward to ending the year with a bang? These three luxurious stays are certain to fit the bill

17/11/2024

Ireland’s love affair with Spanish wines highlights the country’s vinous diversity

17/11/2024

A group of 12 prominent publicans have launched a €1.8m brewery to take back control of the taps

17/11/2024

Jordan Mooney shares two of her favourite dessert recipes for you to whip up

16/11/2024

Next, our Sport Award.

One of Ireland’s most successful and decorated athletes ever, para-cyclist Katie-George Dunlevy took home Ireland’s first gold of the 2024 Paris Paralympics with tandem pilot Linda Kelly.

The spectacular victory in the women’s Para-Cycling Road Race B Time Trial saw her win the race for the third consecutive Paralympics – first Rio, then Tokyo, now Paris.

It confirmed Dunlevy as the most decorated Irish Paralympic athlete of all time, as she is now the keeper of eight Paralympic medals and 15 World Championship medals.

When she was 11, Dunlevy was diagnosed with a rare sight-limiting eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. She has been a dedicated advocate for the visually impaired, regularly speaking to the significance of representation and visibility.

And though she has weathered countless serious injuries along the way, Dunlevy is eager to carry on with Kelly, her skilled tandem pilot, and continue to inspire visually impaired children and the LGBT community.

Our Sport Award is in partnership with Davy and was presented by X.

16/11/2024

Now to our inaugural Women's Health Award, an area where we wanted to spotlight an agent of change.

In 2018, Loretta Dignam set up The Menopause Hub to create a space where women could access expert medical advice, support and treatments for the gravely overlooked physical and emotional challenges associated with menopause.

Th clinic offers services from hormone therapy to nutrition and mental health support. An unwavering advocate for breaking the stigma surrounding menopause, Dignam has empowered countless women to seek help and prioritise their well-being.

Just this year, she expanded the business to a training offshoot to promote best practices in workplaces, and in October, thanks to her and others’ advocacy, the government finally announced that from January, hormone replacement therapy will be free for all women, an extraordinary achievement that will revolutionise women’s healthcare.

16/11/2024

And now to our Social Enterprise Award.

Tammy Darcy is the founder and CEO of The Shona Project, a social enterprise dedicated to empowering and supporting young women and girls in Ireland. The Shona Project provides educational resources and an online platform where girls can access the information and support they need to navigate life’s challenges.

Darcy founded the Shona Project in honour of her older sister, Shona Darcy, who suffered an acquired brain injury in her teens, and despite medical odds, lived until her 40s, sadly passing away in February 2023. Darcy describes the Shona Project as her sister’s legacy.

The highlight each year is the Shine Festival, which brings hundreds of Ireland’s most inspirational women together to share their stories and give their time to the next generation of inspirational young women.

In September, she became just one out of 100 globally to be asked to join the Obama Foundation’s Leader Programme, which aims to connect and better resource changemakers to accelerate positive and lasting change in their communities.

She is advancing the common good, creating tangible solutions to the challenges young women face in Ireland.

16/11/2024

Next to our Woman of the Year for Entertainment.

This acclaimed Irish stand-up comedian, actress and television presenter is known for her sharp wit and versatile performances.

Originally from Drogheda, Deirdre O'Kane began her career in comedy in the '90s and quickly became a prominent figure in the Irish and UK comedy scenes.

Her humour often explores themes of Irish culture, family life and personal anecdotes. In 2014 she turned to acting, receiving widespread acclaim for her portrayal of humanitarian Christina Noble in Noble. Her portrayal of the mother in Moone Boy was exquisite.

This year has seen her kick off her first podcast Keeping It Tight with fellow comedian Emma Doran, but she is also back on stage, with an extraordinarily successful sold-out stand-up tour which is now set to run right through until May 2025 with new dates continually being added.

She is one of the country’s most respected comedic talents and she is our Woman of 2024 for Entertainment.

Our Entertainment Award is in partnership with .

16/11/2024

Our Music Award celebrates an artist who has reached icon status this year.

Dublin-born Jazzy has racked up 300 million streams globally and counting. Her debut single 'Make Me Feel Good' ranked number one in Ireland this year, making her the first Irish woman to top the charts in over 14 years. It also made her the first Irish woman to reach number one on Spotify since its inception in 2012.

The track reached number three on the UK charts and it was named the Official Charts Company’s biggest debut release that year. Now the biggest female Irish artist on Spotify with over eight million monthly listeners, Jazzy has surpassed iconic Irish artists like Sinéad O'Connor and Enya.

Her success has also earned her a spot on the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Europe. In 2024, Jazzy continued her streak of hits with her third UK Top 10 singles 'Someday' and 'Make Up' and the afro house banger No Bad Vibes.

Her music is putting Ireland on the gloal stage in extraordinary ways and we are honoured to award Jazzy as our Woman of 2024 for Music.

Our Music Award is in partnership with Cointreau.

16/11/2024

Next to our Business Award.

With 15 years of experience in corporate financing, Andrea Reynolds launched Swoop in London in 2018 to help SMEs start up, scale up and finance their new ventures.

It’s a technology platform designed to simplify and speed-up access to loans, grants and equity funding for SMEs. It works like a virtual CFO, pulling in a business’s bank accounts and other data to help it ascertain better financing options, and it helps businesses unlock cash by establishing ways to cut costs for banking, utilities and other services.

In December, Swoop was named as the fastest-growing Irish technology business in Deloitte’s ‘Fast 50’ ranking. The company last year raised €6.3 million in a Series A funding round that valued Swoop at over $30 million.

Arguably the UK’s number one expert in business funding, Reybolds is affectionately known to industry peers as the ‘Martin Lewis of business finance' and she is our trailblazing Business awardee for 2024.

The Business Award is in partnership with Enterprise Ireland and was presented by Anna-Marie Turley, Head of Entrepreneurship and HPSU Operations at Enterprise Ireland.

16/11/2024

Our Art & Design Award represents women who have excelled in their creative industry.

Margo Harkin and Anne Crilly are founding members of the radical film-making collective the Derry Film and Video Workshop (DFVW).

Established in 1983 until 1990, DFVW was a women-led film production company. Its members, most of whom had no prior experience in filmmaking, came together with a sense of urgency to make films addressing political tensions around gender, class and the Irish national question..

Films produced by the collective offered a nuanced depiction of these complex forces at work in the North of Ireland. DFVW sought to tell a different story about their lived political and social realities and the intersection and fractures between feminism and republicanism.

A powerful retrospective exhibition-project in this year showcased the history and work of DFVW. Titled ‘We realised the power of it’, it included raw footage, photographs and archival documents.

Margo Harkin and Crilly worked through the archive with curator Sara Greavu and artist Ciara Phillips to preserve, digitise and archive the videotapes, alongside working through an extensive document and image archive for the exhibition.

Harkin and Crilly's dedication to creating the exhibition and seminars around it has opened up an important era of Ireland’s history and the women who were part of it.

16/11/2024

Back to the awards, and next up is our Women of the Year for Literature.

From one of Ireland's most original and admired contemporary writers comes a story of rage and reckoning, joy and transformation, and one woman's decision to leave everything behind.

It’s the perfect description for Dublin writer Cathy Sweeney’s debut novel, Breakdown, which was published in January to widespread acclaim.

A vivid character study of a woman adrift, Breakdown tells the story of a middle-class woman who wakes up one morning in her cosy suburban home, next to her husband while her two children sleep, and without conscious purpose walks out the front door and never returns.

As she journeys, she finds herself questioning her life and its social expectations. A sharp and insightful novel, Sweeney’s vivid character portrait explores the very specific questions of female identity in Ireland.

Breakdown follows Sweeney’s critically acclaimed 2020 short story collection Modern Times, and she has been published everywhere from The Stinging Fly to the Winter Papers and broadcasted on BBC Radio 4.

A pure literary talent, Sweeney is our Woman of the Year for Literature.

16/11/2024

Rooted in classics, almost veering on kitsch, everything has a clever spin in this Dublin eatery

16/11/2024

The relaunch of a beloved regional restaurant, Christmas markets and operatic entertainment all caught our eye this week

14/11/2024

Having spent most of his career making wine for others, Dermot Sugrue is ready to bring his range to a wider audience with the help of investors including the Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville

11/11/2024

The Food&Wine Restaurant of the Year Awards in association with Rémy Martin took place at The Shelbourne in Dublin, honouring restaurants, chefs and more from around the country.

11/11/2024

The Food&Wine Restaurant of the Year Awards in association with Rémy Martin took place at The Shelbourne yesterday, with support from Liberty Wines, Bodegas LAN, Square, and San Pellegrino. Want to know if your favourite took home an award? See the full list of winners now ✨

The Food&Wine Restaurant of the Year Awards in association with Rémy Martin took place at The Shelbourne in Dublin, honouring restaurants, chefs and more from around the country.