" Peter Pearson, in the Sunday Business Post [November 4th 2001], on a family business that helped shape Dublin city.

An insight into the Findlater family enriched by the availability of original material has just been published.

Findlaters was the epitome of the old fashioned approach to commerce and stocked a very wide range of fine foods, wines, ales and spirits. Much of their merchandise such as tea and wine was packaged as Findlaters own brand and the shops had a reputation for quality and excellence of service.

What set this store apart from others was the fact that it managed to survive right through the 19th and 20th centuries until 1969, when the arrival of supermarkets put its old style, personalised business under attack.

However Findlaters, with its several branches well known for their magnificent public clocks in places such as Dalkey, Dun Laoghaire and Rathmines, was sold in 1969 by the heir to the business, the present Alex Findlater.
But five years later he commenced trading under the original family name (Alex bears the same Christian name as the founder of the firm), with a wine shop in Rathmines.

Alex and his team nurtured the new firm to become what is now one of the country's most successful wine distributors, based in the huge vaults of the old Harcourt Street railway station.

Now in retirement from Findlaters, which has been sold to the Cantrell and Cochrane group, Alex has just published what amounts to a lifetime's work. It is a comprehensive history of the Findlater family and its interests, their houses and gardens, their involvement in society, politics and religion, the business and its history, staff and products and much much more.

The book runs to nearly 600 pages and is crammed full of new historical material including photographs and illustrations, many of them in colour.

While Findlaters: The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001 is very much a portrait of a family business which spans two centuries, it is also a fascinating study of a typical successful, upper middle class merchant family in Dublin.

The book recounts memories of former staff who speak of being very well looked after by the firm. Findlaters believed in its staff as the reputation of the firm depended on them.

The Findlaters were also the owners and occupiers of an impressive list of fine houses, mostly located in South Co Dublin. These included Melville, Abilene and Glensavage, all in Blackrock, Melbeach in Monkstown, the Beeches in Glenageary and the Slopes in Dun Laoghaire. The Slopes, a solid Victorian house demolished in the 1970s, was purchased for £2,000 by Alex Findlater in 1860.

This is a supremely readable book, probably because of the author's unique narrative style. The stories are told and the facts are given straight down the line, short and sharp with no unnecessary embellishment.

The book is also readable because of the emphasis on people and their daily lives, their habits and routines, the amusing anecdotes, working conditions, leisure activities, successes and failures.

However there were not many failures in the Findlater story and through their involvement in the social scene, in charities and voluntary organisations, they ensured a supporting network of friends and customers.

The full colour reproductions of Findlater's bottle labels for port, whiskey, stout, beer and ginger ale are a very attractive aspect of the book.

The extensive and capacious vaults at Harcourt Street have not only served as storage and a wine shop since 1991 but also houses the Findlater museum -- an impressive array of advertising memorabilia, artifacts and photographs, all carefully handed down by each generation.

Much of this historic material, arranged by Alex Findlater, was to provide the backbone to his book. This is the story of a remarkable Dublin business, made unique by the authorship of its dynamic family member and the amazing survival of so much original source material.
"

" IRISH TIMES Tuesday October 16 2001
An Irishman’s Diary. Kevin Myers. Page 13.

‘Alex Findlater’s new history of the family and its role in the commerce of the city is without question the most important book about Dublin to have appeared this year, or indeed in recent years. For its is not just a history of a few shops and the things people bought, but it is also a history of the people from which Alex comes, and which is now on the verge of extinction: the old Protestant, unionist community, which once filled Rathgar and Rathmines, Sandymount, Aileesbury Road, Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire, and which is now almost no more.’
‘For all the enchanting images those words convey, Findlaters were always people of commerce, and as a wine merchant, Alex established an agency with some of the finest wines from across the world: Penfolds, Royal Tokaji, Cloudy Bay, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Ayala, Bouchard Pere et Fils, Chateau Meaume, Louis Michael and many others.
The publication of his history of the Findlater family also marks his departure from the front rank of the company, though he will remain its ambassador at large. He has brought to the business of writing the family history the same charm, the same cleverness and the same attention to detail which made him the outstandingly successful and popular businessman that he is. It is not merely a hugely entertaining and ravishingly illustrated account of a commercial caste which is now all but gone – the pictures alone merit its purchase; but it is also a seriously important insight into a neglected part of Irish history over the 19th and 20th centuries’.
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"

" Irish Independent Tuesday 16 October 2001
City Life page 5 article by John S Doyle

Alex Findlater’s just published history of his family’s famous business recalls an era of home deliveries and cool grocery shops with the pervasive aromas of fresh bread, smoked bacon, spices, wines and coffees. The rare auld times, indeed. John S Doyle reports:

‘A fine book just published records what it took to run such a business. And in reminding us how much has changed in the way we shop, it also shows how little has changed in other ways: take for example, the belly-aching about the beautiful Spike that is soon to be erected in O’Connell Street. Alex Findlater in his history of his family and the old firm, records that in 1891 his great uncle Adam Findlater, with the publisher Henry Gill, a fellow trader in O’Connell Street, promoted a private bill in parliament to remove Nelson’s Pillar from its position just north of the GPO and place it at the top of the street……………..’

‘It is also a history of the Dublin Protestant merchant class, which itself, at least to the onlooking non-Protestant population, is a subset of the ruling class that prevailed up to 1922 but one which survived that ruling class by another half-century or so.’

‘The firm of Findlaters exemplified the best precepts of the Protestant tradition: right dealing with customers and staff, good value in the produce, a sense of enterprise and civic duty, industry and service.’

‘Happily the name re-emerged in 1974; the author established a niche as a wine merchant, and the business thrives to this day in Harcourt Street. His book is hugely entertaining, meticulously researched from a vast private archive as well as public sources, and richly illustrated throughout, in colour and black-and-white’.
"

" The Irish Times Sat 20 October 2001 Weekend page 11
Review by Robert O'Byrne

'From the middle of the 19th century until the company's demise at the end of 1968, Findlaters had been the most famous grocers of Dublin; at it's height the business supported 21 retail outlets employing hundreds of staff.'

'In effect, Findlaters was an institution and,as becomes clear, while for a long time this was its strength, ultimately it became a fatal weakness. It is therefore important that Findlaters has been properly and thoroughly commemorated and the wealth of archival deployed provides a meticulous picture not just of the family but also of mercantile life in Dublin during the past 200 years'.

'Like their former stores the mercantile class to which the Findlaters belonged no longer exists. Alex Findlater is amusing on the snobberies of a former era when a wealth of tiny distinctions was used to seperate one social group from another, quoting from Great Expectations that "while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you can be as genteel as never was and brew".'

'His own business as a wine merchant has thrived, to such an extent that the past few years were primarily spent researching and writing this history of the family.'

'...Let this book be recommended as a valuable addition to the history of Dublin, social, economic and mercantile'. "

" Irish Times Weekend Saturday 20 October 2001 page 2
Quidnunc by Renagh Holohan
'This book, said Ruairi Quinn [leader of the Irish Labour Party] when he launched Alex Findlater's, Findlaters: The story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001 in the vaults under Harcourt Street station last week, was not just the story of the Dublin merchant class but of the contribution that southern unionism had made to the state."We have been too shy, and impoverished as a result, to recognise this contribution. Until recent times it could not be spoken of".

'Quinn said he first met Findlater three and a half years ago in bizarre circumstances in Connemara. It was a fun cycle--a tour de bog--and Findlater was dressed in a harlequinn costume and riding a messenger bike. It was all rather different from Brendan Behan's definition of the Anglo-Irish--a Protestant on a horse. Findlater is not at all Anglo-Irish but very entrepreneurial;the family had come from Scotland and enriched the city over generations.'
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"

"
This is a wonderful book There are extraordinary vignettes in it and extraordinary stories, things that I simply didn’t know about. The Dublin Artisans’ Dwellings Association was effectively founded by one of the Findlaters along with others. The Olympia theatre, originally known as the Empire Palace theatre; the name was diplomatically changed for a reason that you might suspect.
Originally Dan Lowrey’s theatre was effectively rescued and managed by the Findlaters. Famous Findlaters Church, at the top of now Parnell Square, was given in toto to the then Presbyterian community......and when the Church of Ireland being constructed in Suffolk Street / Andrew Street ran into financial trouble he [Alexander the Founder of the company in 1823] very generously made up the difference......

Other bits and pieces that come to mind and I hope that I am wetting your appetite to go out and buy this book, it will make a wonderful Christmas present after you have read it yourself..........

There is something straight out of the raj and the Empire; one of Alex’s aunts, Doris, went to India and she wrote back about her experiences of a tiger shoot, which for the book alone is worth reading. Absolutely fascinating. She describes how a group of 15 people went to this tiger shoot, they were mad match making, she was obviously a very eligible and very attractive young woman. Two very suitable suitors were proffered. One had the good fortune to have the miserable income in to-day’s sums of about £140,000 a year. But he didn’t catch her eyes sufficiently!........


There are interests in gardening, there are interests in sport........And the political exchange that ran through the period of the Economic war and the Emergency, as we so euphemistically call it, and the whole issue between protection and free trade, and problems of supplies, all come through the book; every aspect of Irish life is there.

I read two nights ago how Dermot [the author's father] would go and purchase turkeys in the run up to Christmas and one of the places where they bought turkeys was Ballincargy, County Westmeath. One of our labour deputies in Leinster House is Willie Penrose from Ballincargy and I said to him in passing ‘was there such a thing as a turkey fair or turkey market in B’. Oh, he said ‘Yes, it was really big’. And I said ‘did the Findlaters play a role in that’ He said ‘If Findlater didn’t arrive there was no market, they were the banker, and more importantly they guaranteed the price and were the main buyers. You were talking of thousands of turkeys’.

Finally ............ this harlequin on the messenger bike [the author, that I met on the Bog Road in Connemara some three and a half years ago] ........when in his early twenties against the legacy of this incredible history,..... took upon himself the responsibility to close down the business, not an easy thing to do, it would have been easier infact to let it close itself down, but to close it down in the way he did ................... the same entrepreneurial skill that saw the necessity to close down the business was responsible for resurrecting phoenix like of the new business. And I think it is a tribute to Alex ability and to the Findlater family that that kind of entrepreneurial skill has manifested itself so strongly over so many generations ........

I asked Alex.............how long did it really take him to write the book........ And he said from the time that he decided to research and write .........three and a half years. And, I said, what help did you get, what research assistance did you have, because this work is riddled with footnotes and serious extracts from a whole host of sources, and I am only talking about the text, not all the illustrations. He said he did it all himself with the help of an excellent editor. It is a scholarly piece of research, scholarly piece of history, and it encompasses an extraordinary array of different aspects of social and political history, many aspects of which I haven’t even had the chance to refer to. Can I just conclude on your behalf by thanking Alex for what he has given to the city in true tradition of the Findlater family.




"

" From Hotel & Catering Review, November 2001, Book review by the Editor, Frank Corr.

Scottish Presbyterians are best known in Ireland as planters or invading soldiers. But there were another lot - canny Scots merchants who came to Dublin in the 18th Century to make their fortune and usually succeeded in doing so. They included John Jameson, Thomas Heiton, John Arnott, Alexander Thom and the Millar, Dunlop, Mackie and Johnston clans, all of whom developed successful businesses here.

And there was Alexander Findlater, who came to Dublin from Glasgow around 1820. A nephew of another Alexander Findlater, who was a Scottish excise man and friend of the poet Robert Burns, he traded in whiskies, both wholesale and retail, opening branches at Burgh Quay, North Wall, North King Street, Halston St and Dun Laoghaire, initially with a partner and later under the style of 'Alex Findlater'.

His life in Ireland and those of his descendants are recounted with love, objectivity and not a little humour by the present Alex Findlater in Findlaters- the story of a Dublin merchant family (A & A Farmar at £35).

Frank Corr's excellent,long and descriptive review of the book concludes: And so an era ends with, perhaps the final passing of the Findlater business out of the family. In that book he has written the fascinating story of one of the great merchant famalies in a lucid, light style and an honesty which has always been at the heart of his family's dealings.







"

" Sunday Business Post Agenda Section review by Tomas Clancy
December 2nd 2001 page a6.

This is a magnificent piece of Irish history writing which provides a welcome new perspective on practically every significant major event in this country over the past 200 years.

The book is as lavish as the subjects covered, running to some 600 pages written in a laconic prose style complemented by fascinating illustrations.

Author Alex Findlater gives an unflinchingly honest and invariably entertaining portrait of family and business life; one which saw the Findlaters cross paths with everyone from Gladstone and Arthur Guinness, to Robert Burns, Padraig Pearse and de Valera during the course of 230 years.

There are anecdotes interesting from a business prospective.........

But it is the story of the company and the family's interaction with 230 years of customers that really excites...........

The book is sprinkled with plenty of wry humour.......

This excellent book is a gripping narrative and a brilliant insight into a closed world. Roll on the long winter evenings -- this is the perfect accompaniment to a glass of Findlater's port.

"

" Maureen Keane writing in the Farmers Journal 8 Dec 2001 p19

This large, beautifully produced book tells the story of the Findlater wine and food business from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century Dublin up to the present day.

It is a valuable social history as well as a family memoir.
The book is particularly interesting in the portrait it paints of the Irish Protestant merchant and professional class over two centuries of change and upheval.

For such a big and detailed book it is surprisingly light to read, written in clear, direct prose, and suffused with a sense of personal delight and justifiable family pride.
"

" Review by Paula O'Regan in Suburb Magazine, the local colour magaine for South Dublin and beyond.December 2001.

THE FINDLATER EMPIRE. Alex Findlater's monumental book, documenting the fortunes of his family, captures a whole era.

The name Findlater conjures up memories of grocery stores of long ago when communities were smaller, the customer was known by name, when shopping was an opportunity to meet the neighbours and catch up with the latest gossip.

The excellent review deals with consequences of the playing of God Save the Queen at the close of the performances in the Empire Palace Dublin [now the Olympia], the co-operation between Father Murphy and Canon McClean in the trenches in Gallipoli, and the parts played by the Author's two grandfathers in the Easter Rising 1916. 'An unusual and different perspective of 1916 and the subsequent years of Irish political life, both local and national, is given from the Unionist side...............In fact the book is not only a biography of the Findlater family and an account of their business interests, but also an invaluable insight into the social, cultural and political life of Dublin city and county from the 18th century to the present day.

This would make an ideal present, particularly for Dubliners over 50 who would remember the events described and take particular pleasure in the wealth of old photographs, posters and illustrations. It is also an excellent reference book, impressively comprehensive in its coverage. This is a book you could grow to love.



"

" Sunday Tribune 16 December 2001 Tom Doorley

When I was a nipper we had our groceries delivered every week by Findlaters. This was rather a grand custom which was in inverse proportion to the family fortune but it was splendidly convenient, especially as my somewhat Luddite parents didn't have a car.

Every week the Findlater's van would roll up, maroon red with gold lettering on the side, and as the driver unloaded the goods I would poke my head into the back to see what everyone else was getting. It tended to include a few dusty bottles with a flash of white paint on the sides, wrapped in straw protectors. I knew now that this was vintage port, probably the 1945, possibly the legendary 1927. Those were the days.

I once swiped--and I blush to recall it--a small bottle of Schweppes Indian Tonic Water from the back of the van and to this incident I ascribe both my aversion to gin and tonic and my strange compulsion to press a half-crown into Alex Findlater's hand whenever I see him. However I can now partly expiate my guilt by buying his book..........which is a rattling good read and a fascinating sidelight on Dublin social history. "

" GROCER MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2001 Editor Frank Madden

The rise of the Findlater family from the ancient quartz cliffs of Scotland to its exhilarating accession of 19th century merchant Dublin is an immensely epic tale. Written with accomplished zest by fifth generation Alex Findlater, Findlaters--The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001-- vividly depicts the eccentric antics and historic establishment of Dublin's best known and loved wine and food business. The reader is taken on a journey where legends such as Mary Queen of Scots, Jim Larkin and James Joyce are eclectically woven in the fabric of the Findlater story.

The ubiquity of the Findlater business is uncharacteristic in today's often fickle global economy. This survival is based on the company's ability to evolve with changing climates whilst maintaining its distinctive personality. In recent times this has been best typified by its merger with Cantrell & Cochrane.

The article then quotes extensively from the text in a four page spread. It concludes: 'Findlaters success as a wine merchant's has been well documented. More recently.....Findlaters merged with drinks giant C&C creating the biggest wine distributor in the country......
C&C will gain Findlaters 6% of the wine market, increasing its own share to approximately 18%.

'Over its long and wonderful life the story of Findlaters has been about the family that owns the company, the producers who supply the goods, the executives who manage the business, the staff who serve the customers and, not least, the loyal customers who support the whole'.


"

" Sunday Independent December 23rd 2001

MONDAY
Trawling through town in search of goodies, I am immensely cheered up by the sight of Alex Findlater's autobiography on sale in Hodges Figgis. On the dust jacket and in full colour, the author is shown sporting a top hat. He is not exactly wearing it; it appears to be at least two sizes too small, so that it is perched on top of his head like a great cylindrical pimple.
Perhaps there are a couple of half-bricks inside it to weigh it in place, or maybe Mr Findlater is as gifted as one of those inscrutable jugglers from Ulan Baton who appear at royal command performances and twirl plates on top of bamboo canes. At any rate, he is a nice man, and I wish him a happy Yuletide. "

" SUNDAY TRIBUNE 23 dDecember 2001

As is our custom at this time of the year, we have asked individuals from different walks of Irish life to choose their favourite books of the last 12 months.

FEARGAL QUINN
Senator and owner of Superquinn.

My top three reads of 2001: FINDLATERS by Alex Findlater. The reason I found this of interest is not just that it deals with the grocery business but it is the first time I have read of life in Dublin from 1914-1921 from a unionist viewpoint."

" WHO READ WHAT IN 2001
The Irish Times December 1 2001

Eamon Delaney
Novelist and critic. His book An Accidental Diplomat was published by New Island this year.

I also enjoyed Findlaters-The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001 by Alex Findlater (A&AFarmar,£35) for its fascinating social history of Dublin."

" The book has been beautifully prepared, has been lavishly illustrated (many in colour)and is a credit to all concerned. While escentially a family history the book is a major contribution to the history of Dublin where the Findlaters have been part and parcel of life in the city in its many aspects. If one were to read it solely for its nostalgic value one would be well pleased but to read it for its intrinsic value will make it a work to be treasured. TM"

" This is a big book, with a wealth of illustrations,colour and black and white - about an eminent, successful Irish family grocery chain. Well, you might hesitate... but hold on there!The Scots founding father was friendly with the poet Robert Burns. The family shops figure in both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake - and in J.P.Donleavy's The Ginger Man. For eighty-five years the family spent some od its loose change in support of various theatrical ventures..................................................
These elegantly written reminiscences of a grocer and a wine merchant, Dubliner and family man, are a pleasure to read - if only for the account of a truely remarkable assembly of aunts! "

" 'We little thought that a family history of this nature would stretch to 578 pages, but we know that the original manuscript has been drastically pruned prior to publication. .... The volume has been meticulously researched and is patently a labour of love by the author who is a long-standing member of the Old Dublin Society.
The book has been beautifully prepared, has been lavishly illustrated (many in colour)and is a credit to all concerned. While escentially a family history the book is a major contribution to the history of Dublin where the Findlaters have been part and parcel of life in the city in its many aspects. If one were to read it solely for its nostalgic value one would be well pleased but to read it for its intrinsic value will make it a work to be treasured'. TM"

" George Nelson Wheeler of Annsborough, Robertstown "met a tragic end while shooting on the bog at Robertstown. He was shooting game with a muzzle-loading hammer. He fired once and the gunpowder failed to ignite. Then he did just what one is taught not to do. He looked down the barrel to see what was going on, and--boom--off went his head!"
That graphic account of the demise of the father of Surgeon William Ireland de Courcy-Wheeler, who had entered Trinity College in 1862, is given by Alex Findlater in hiis comprehensive history og the Dublin firm which occupied a prominent site in O'Connell Street for almost two centuries".
Alex Findlater's long (577 page) book is a fine testimony to an interesting family which provided good employment over many decades; and a valuable record of commercial and social mores over two centuries."

" Our reviewers pick their top five books of the year.
Jeananne Crowley, actress and critic writes: "Alex Findlater's tome on the
old family firm is labour of love and scholarship both. You could teach a
social history course just by passing it around the class. Beautifully
produced and lavishly illustrated - every school library in the country
should have one". "