Fancy a wine to take your breath away! Or a Bordeaux you can still taste lovingly every time you close your eyes!

Well if you do, don’t bother drinking any of the samples available at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin.

For it is selling off all its best wines after a review by Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore that, in Ireland’s financial climate, it is no longer appropriate for expensive wines to be bought for visiting dignitaries.

They will have to get used to a more modest selection of wines when they call into the Department of Foreign Affairs at Iveagh House in Dublin.

Gilmore has decided to clear the cellars of their most expensive wines, the Irish Independent reports.

Almost one-third of the 2,343 bottles in the cellars have been deemed “tradeable” by wine experts and are to be put on the market.

The entire wine collection has an overall value of €77,767, and the vast majority of those being kept for receptions and functions will be valued at €30 a bottle or less.

With the higher-end wines for sale, the department hopes to recoup almost €40,000, or around half the value of the total stock, for the taxpayer.

Among those being sold are 22 bottles of Chateau Leoville Barton Cru Classe 1997 bought for €75 each in 2006.

“Once Eamon came in and figured out what was happening in his department, he ordered a review of the spending policy,” a source told the Independent.

Gilmore has already ordered that bottles bought for official receptions should cost no more than €10, with a cap of €20 for dinners.

The source added, “We're not sitting on one of the finest cellars in Europe, but there was definitely some expensive wine bought that shouldn’t have been.”

The department spent €7,835 on wine in 2012 at an average price per bottle of €15. No wines have been bought to date this year.

The move is similar to a recent decision made by the Elysee Palace, the residence of the French president.

It sold off a tenth of its cellar, and replaced some of the more expensive wines with cheaper ones.