Wine, laughter and song are all on the menu at a popular North Yorkshire venue, as Jenny Needham found out.

MARK and Emma Ryan run Great Northern Wine, a specialist independent wine merchants, with a shop and a lounge for live music and comedy evenings, in Blossomgate, Ripon.

Mr Ryan, 48, grew up in Ripon and his wife, 34, is from Bradford.

They met on the Great Wall of China while on a trek in aid of Cancer Research, and married three years ago.

Speaking about the business, Mr Ryan said: “It’s very much a team effort. Emma does the admin and I do as I am told, generally all the running around and selling of the wine.”

He first became interested in wine when working for a speciality food company in London.

He said: “We were supplying all the top restaurants and hotels, so while waiting to see the chefs, usually just before service, you were offered a glass of something, so wine was the obvious thing.”

Asked whether wine tasting was a real job, he replied: “Most definitely. It is a lot harder than people think. You have to be very serious about what you taste. At some of the bigger tastings, you can be faced with upwards of 300 wines.

“Firstly, you need to be focused on the wines you might be interested in. Then you can taste and evaluate each wine on merit, working out whether it is worth the asking price and if you feel you can sell it confidently for a sensible margin.

“There are always people who will say that we have a cushy number, but they only see that side of things.

“They don’t see the real side of the job, such as when I am cleaning the toilets after a busy weekend, or the setting up of tables and the washing and polishing of 300 glasses for our tastings.”

Mr Ryan enjoys the opportunity to travel provided by the business.

He said: “I have been very lucky in that the job does allow a bit of travel. It is the best way to get to know the winemakers and the region and, obviously, tasting the wines in situ gives you a much better appreciation of them.

“All the trips are memorable for one reason or another, but one does stand out and that was a trip to Oporto and the Douro region of Portugal.

“We visited the vineyards and then tasted the wines and ports of Dirk Niepoort – one of the top ten winemakers in the world.

“We also enjoyed a Michelinstarred dinner as we were talked through the wines by the man himself. Another great trip was to northern Spain to taste the wines of Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Navarra. I was lucky enough to have a tasting in one of the largest private cellars in Spain, owned by restaurateur Victor Montes. The day before, he had given the same treatment to the Crown Prince of Monaco.

“It is very easy to build relationships with the winemakers because, by nature, it is a very social industry, so if you share the same passion for wine as they do, there is generally that common ground which is a great starting point.”

Mr Ryan believes everyone has different tastes when it comes to enjoying wine.

He said: “Everyone knows what they like. There may be too much emphasis placed on what is right and what is wrong in the wine world. At the end of the day, everything is subjective, so we always tell people to drink what they like, but always be prepared to try something different and to learn from those experiences.”

Asked whether there was such a thing as a good, cheap wine, Mr Ryan said: “There is some good inexpensive wine on the market, but I am a great believer in you get what you pay for.”

He believes his business has plenty to offer which supermarkets cannot. He said: “As an independent, we offer a far more interesting range of wines from generally small producers who are all about quality, not quantity.

“We also have wines from lesser-known regions and wines made from interesting and rarely heard of grape varieties.

Social evenings play an important role in the business.

Mr Ryan said: “We host live music, comedy and winetasting events. We try to provide a relaxed experience of quality wine and entertainment, something for the grown-ups.

“We both spend so much time in the business, we decided that we wanted to create somewhere we and our friends would like to go, so our working life is incorporated into our social life. We started by trawling through MySpace looking for great musicians. If we liked them, we booked them, invited customers along and people seemed to enjoy it.

“Both the music and comedy events have become really successful.

Mr Ryan spoke about the changes taking place in the industry. He said: “There are major changes happening in the industry at the moment brought on by the current financial climate and the Government’s insistence on increasing duty on alcohol.

“Despite the vast majority of voters who think alcohol tax is too high, the trade and ordinary drinkers are seen as the golden goose that keeps laying. That said, I think it is the time of the independent again, because we have the ability to diversify.”

Asked whether the gradual demise of the cork was a good thing, he said: “Its demise has been a good thing, offering the consumer fresh, clean wine every time, but it has also allowed the cork industry to become more sustainable and therefore the quality of cork has improved.

“As convenient as it is to unscrew a cap off a bottle, you cannot beat the aesthetics and sound of pulling a cork on a really good bottle of wine.”

● Great Northern Wine, Blossomgate, Ripon HG4 2AJ. Tel: 01765-606767.

Details of upcoming music, comedy and wine-tasting evenings on greatnorthernwine.co.uk.