Liquid Irish

New events listing feature

2013-05-06T14:16:00.002+01:00

I know it has looked like a bit of a ghost town here over the last month. The truth, though, is that there has been quite a bit of metal-bashing behind the scenes.

Last year I noticed a huge increase in the number of spirits-related events in Ireland. So many that it was hard to keep track of them all. I have now gathered every upcoming event in Ireland that I know of onto a single page. There is a link to it in the menu at the top of the blog too. If you are organising something and it's not already listed, drop me a line or a tweet.

Why did it take so long to create a single web page? Well, in real life I'm a software developer and I took the opportunity to explore some of the latest, industrial strength technologies. The page (and the associated admin screen) is vastly over-engineered but I consider it a template for future, more complex features.

Knappogue Castle Twin Wood 16 year old

2013-04-07T19:24:00.002+01:00

Knappogue Castle continues to explore the possibilities of sherried Bushmills-distilled single malt. We've had a 16-year old Twin Wood before, where the spirit had been finished in sherry wood for 9 months. They upped the sherry stakes a year later with a 17-year old Twin Wood, finished for 21 months.

The new 16-year old shares that sherry depth, having also spent 21 months in Oloroso casks (after 14 years, 3 months in bourbon casks).

Well, that's what the press release says but the numbers don't quite add up. The whiskey was distilled in 1995 and bottled in December 2012. At a minimum, the whiskey must be close to 17 years old but it has only spent 16 years in a cask, if you tot up the sherry and bourbon stretches mentioned above. There is a mysterious year unaccounted for!

It's bottled at 40% ABV. There are 4,500 numbered bottles, and they go for $100 each.

Whiskey & Chocolate

2013-03-06T15:58:00.002Z

Look at any whiskey review and you'll see a spirit evaluated in stark isolation. Not many can withstand the intense scrutiny that demands perfection in nose, taste and finish. It's the same when we try a whiskey at a whiskey society meeting, or even at home. We just don't envisage it as one part of a larger experience. It must stand or fall alone.

It's a standard that doesn't seem to apply to wine. We know that some wines are good in the hand at a cocktail party, others better kept for washing down the roast duck.

When I do whiskey and food matchings I'm reminded that I'm not getting as much from whiskey as I might. If I combine a sample of whiskey with something else with a complex flavour profile, I can create something new. The whole is not the sum of the parts. It might be better, it might be worse, but it will be something different, and worth exploring.

That bottle on the shelf that I'm avoiding, that's an opportunity, a challenge to figure out what to put alongside its contents that will transform them into something sublime. I could try anything with some complexity, like cheese, chocolate, or even another whiskey.

Last week I co-presented the Irish Whiskey Society's third annual Whiskey & Chocolate tasting with Clementine Agron of Cocoa Atelier. It was the perfect chance to take whiskey out for a well-deserved spin in the wider landscape of flavour. We had plain whiskey, flavoured whiskey, single plantation chocolate, flavoured chocolate and even a whiskey-flavoured chocolate.

I deliberately picked the widest range of "whiskey" (not every bottle was strictly a whiskey) flavours with the (unstated) intention that there would be at least one or two that people did not like. My hope was that the accompanying chocolate would transform that whiskey into something far more pleasurable.

I think that worked out because the least preferred whiskey of the night (the cherry-flavoured bourbon) was also one half of the favourite whiskey-chocolate combination. (You can see all the votes here.)

It took some trial and error to come up with the matches listed below. If you live in Dublin, you might like to try the Cocoa Atelier chocolates with their suggested spirit partners (here are six more from last year). Or just use these pairings as inspiration to discover your own.

Incidentally, Gay Byrne shared his thoughts on the tasting on his Sunday radio show. You can hear the excerpt here (.mp3).

1. Glendalough Poitín & Almond Rocher

2013 is awash in Irish poitíns. I count five brands on the shelves right now with more on the way. This could either be the peak year for the category or the start of something big if drinkers notice and embrace it. I wanted, therefore, to put poitín on the society's radar and included the Glendalough.

It's made from malted barley (and sugar beet) but tastes entirely unlike whiskey so I wasn't sure if it would combine well with chocolate. The Almond Rocher (diced almonds in a praline base coated in milk chocolate) dispelled my doubts entirely.

If poitín succeeds it will be as a cocktail ingredient. I think we demonstrated how well it can mesh with other flavours.

2. Canadian Club & Papua New Guinea

Rye is an unfamiliar flavour for Irish whiskey drinkers. The makers of Canadian Club describe their entry level whiskey as "smooth" but the first time I tried it, "smooth" was not one of the words that occurred to me. I didn't go for it. I persevered, however, becoming accustomed to the taste and now quite enjoy it.

I didn't expect the room to take to it immediately but it was a chance to see if the accompanying chocolate (Papua New Guinea - 70% pure plantation dark chocolate featuring notes of pepper creating a very intense full bodied chocolate flavour) could overcome that.

In truth, we originally matched this one with an Ivory Coast chocolate (40% pure plantation milk chocolate striking a balance between the bitterness of the cocoa bean and creamy milk chocolate) but these were in short supply by the time the tasting came around. The Papua New Guinea worked well until the finish, when the bitter cocoa dominated, upsetting the balance.

3. Jim Beam Devil's Cut & Salted Caramel

Never mind the whiskey, the combo of salt and caramel blew me away the first time I tried it in the Cocoa Atelier shop.

I think salted caramel with this bourbon works well but it was the least favourite match of the night.

I'm quite fond of Devil's Cut, by the way. One of the side-benefits of Beam's acquisition of Cooley has been better access in Ireland to products like this from Beam's portfolio.

4. Jim Beam Red Stag & Almond Crunch

I'm sure the whiskey purists were appalled when they realised what was in front of them but this black cherry-infused whiskey has kickstarted a whole new whiskey sub-category. In contrast to the demographic bourbon normally reaches (slightly older white males), this sweeter drink appeals to younger men & women equally, and reaches the Hispanic and African-American drinker too.

Since Beam released this in 2009 we have seen flavoured whiskeys from competitors like Jack Daniel's and Bushmills. Beam itself has released other variations under the Red Stag label. Flavoured whiskey will be around for a while.

It's a nice drink but probably a little sweet and sticky to take neat. Predictably it didn't garner any votes as the favourite whiskey of the night. The combination with the Almond Crunch (diced almonds in a praline base coated in dark chocolate), however, was the hit pairing of the evening.

5. Compass Box Orangerie & Venezuela

This was another flavoured whiskey from reputable Scotch blender, Compass Box. A high-end example this time, infused with the "hand-zested peel of Navalino oranges and subtle accents of Indonesian cassia bark and Sri Lankan cloves".

The website for Orangerie suggests a dark chocolate accompaniment and that's what we had - Venezuela (70% pure plantation dark chocolate from Venezuela revealing spicy and floral notes).

6. BenRiach 12 year old & Blackcurrant

If you add orange zest to a whiskey it suddenly ceases to be a whiskey, legally speaking. There are traditionally accepted methods of adjusting the flavour, however, that fall within the legal bounds. One of those is the choice of cask used to mature the spirit.

I wanted a good example of a sherry-matured whiskey in the line-up to get the dark fruit flavours typically associated with such casks. I asked around and BenRiach got good notices so I picked this one up (Ally in the Celtic Whiskey Shop was especially effusive about the 12 year old).

Coincidentally or not, we found it meshed with a dark fruit-based chocolate, Blackcurrant (dark chocolate filled with a strong blackcurrant ganache using puree of blackcurrant, decorated with blackcurrant paint strokes).

7. Connemara

I've always been disappointed with food products that claim to contain whiskey (whiskey marmalade, whiskey truffles, whiskey fudge, etc). They never taste of whiskey. My guess is that they are aimed at the majority of consumers who don't actually like whiskey so the makers only add a dash.

For the Irish Whiskey Society, then, I asked Cocoa Atelier if they would make us a chocolate that tasted unambiguously of whiskey. I supplied them with a bottle of smoky, cask strength (58%) Connemara single malt.

The early sample of this that I tried was unmistakeably whiskey-laden. The ones we had on the night were not, I have to admit. So this ambition was not entirely fulfilled. At least it gives us something to shoot for next year!

Teeling Whiskey

2013-02-11T00:46:00.000Z

The Teeling Whiskey Company is setting the pace these days, with a third release in only four months. This one is just called "Teeling Whiskey" so I think we can reasonably suppose it represents the company's house style and aspirations.

There are lots of hints from the bottle that Teeling is setting its roots deep in Dublin distilling history. "Since 1782" flanks what I take to be a phoenix rising from the heat of a pot still. This refers to the recorded involvement of the Teeling family in whiskey manufacture way back then. There has been no distilling in Dublin since the 1970s so this is a marker that Jack Teeling intends to revive it. The "Spirit of Dublin" above the name underscores that intention.

The overall effect of the label recalls the era when the front page of a newspaper was an image-free jumble of typefaces and styles. That and the black bottle (actually dark green) recall the 1890s when the Dublin distillers were riding high and had yet to succumb to the fashion for blends.

For now, this is all aspirational. The new Teeling Whiskey is a blend of components supplied by Cooley/Beam and therefore made in Louth, not Dublin. It's going to be some years before we taste a Dublin whiskey again so let's drag our minds back to the present and inspect what's inside the bottle.

It's a combination of malt and grain whiskey, with a higher than normal composition of first fill bourbon barrels and a higher than usual ratio of malt to grain. The casks were hand-picked by TWC.

Through a friend of the company, whiskey consultant Dr James Swan, rum casks were sourced directly from the Flor de Caña rum distillery in Nicaragua. The blend was married in these rum casks for four months. It was then bottled unchill-filtered at 46%, to preserve mouth feel and flavour.

On the tongue, it's quite a "hot", spicy whiskey. Some whiskeys survive ice better than others and, in this case, ice tones down the heat without killing the flavour. It would be a good pub whiskey, I reckon.

The label ascribes an extra sweet and smooth characteristic to the influence of the rum casks. I can certainly detect a light finish of barley sugar and strawberry jam but that slight Cooley blend bitterness survives too.

It will cost a very reasonable €30 or so a bottle with availability initially in Ireland (via the Celtic Whiskey Shop and Dublin Airport) but the hope is to get it to other markets soon.

Carlow Brewing / Alltech Distillery

2013-02-10T14:27:00.000Z

This week I visited the Carlow Brewing Company (better known as O'Hara's) to meet the eponymous Seamus O'Hara, and Jack O'Shea of Alltech, a global biotech company.

Last August Irish whiskey fans were surprised by the announcement that Alltech had just shipped new whiskey stills from the US for installation at the brewery. From my chat with Jack and Seamus, I get the impression that even those involved were surprised by just how quickly it all came about. The first spirit trickled from the stills in Carlow on November 1st, 2012, not six months after the first meeting between Seamus and Alltech's founder, Dr Pearse Lyons.

Five generations of Dr Lyons' family worked as coopers, supplying barrels to distilleries in Ireland. Dr Lyons himself interned at both the Guinness and Harp Lager breweries, later qualifying with a degree in brewing and distilling from the British School of Malting and Brewing. In 2000, Dr Lyons established his own brewery in Lexington, Kentucky, and the first new distillery in downtown Lexington in more than a century when the Town Branch Distillery opened in 2012. Alltech's Lexington Brewing and Distilling Company one of the few sites in the world to house both brewing and distilling at the same location. Since November, Carlow is another. (It's interesting to note that Alltech's stills in Kentucky were made in Scotland while the new stills in Carlow were made in Kentucky. Perhaps this trans-Atlantic transplantation is intended to stir up the whiskey gene pool, to cross-fertilise among distilling traditions.)

Alltech, as a biotech company, has also developed its own yeast for distilling and has additional expertise in the use of enzymes for the conversion of starch to sugar, the first step in converting grain to alcohol. (Normally it is the enzymes in the malted barley that catalyse this conversion but Irish legislation permits the supplementary use of other natural enzymes, or diastases.)

The brisk commissioning of the Alltech / Carlow Brewing Company joint venture (so brisk that they haven't paused to come up with a catchier name) was facilitated by the availability of much of the required kit on site. The malt can be mashed and fermented by the brewery so not much else was required beyond a couple of stills and receiver vessels, and the piping to connect them. Nothing is automated; it is truly a craft operation.

The wash still

So far, production is fairly conventional. The mash is all malted barley, and that barley is the distiller's variety, not the brewer's. The spirit is double distilled and filled into ex-bourbon casks that Alltech supplies from its distillery in Kentucky. It's then shipped off to a bonded warehouse to mature quietly. It's already a five-day-a-week routine that will ensure a decent volume of single malt whiskey a few years down the road.

Filled ex-bourbon casks. Photo courtesy of Alltech / Carlow Brewing Co.

I expect convention to yield to experimentation soon though. Distillers are typically conservative with their mash recipes. Bushmills' brief dalliance with crystal malt a few years ago was a notable exception. Brewers are far more broad-minded when it comes to grain. To look at it another way, what makes this new distillery unique in Ireland is that it's attached to an innovative craft brewery. It's unthinkable that we would never see that reflected in the distillery output.

The distillery has one other unique feature, you can see it in the original press release from Alltech announcing the distillery. That's the spirit still and it differs from the conventionally-shaped wash still in having a rectifying column in place of the swan neck. I'm not familiar with its operation but apparently it offers enhanced control over the type of distillate produced. The use of such a still is not entirely unknown in these islands - Loch Lomond has four of them and Penderyn in Wales has another riff on the same concept.

We are guaranteed a new Irish whiskey from Carlow in a few years' time. I think we are in for a few surprises too.

(L-R) Mark Coffman from Alltech in the United States, Seamus O'Hara from Carlow Brewing Company and Jack O'Shea from Alltech Ireland, with the spirit still. Photo courtesy of Alltech / Carlow Brewing Co.

Knappogue Castle 14-year old Twin Wood

2013-01-24T01:08:00.000Z

Knappogue Castle has produced another in their series of "Twin Wood" single malt bottlings. This 14-year old (bottled in October 2012) is younger than the 16- and 17-year olds that preceded it but there are a few other important, less obvious differences.

The "Twin Wood" in the name refers to the maturation of the whiskey in both ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. Although that's not unusual for Irish whiskey, it was a departure from the all-bourbon style Knappogue favoured until quite recently.

The first two Twin Woods were sherry finishes. In other words, the whiskey was matured in bourbon casks, then transferred to sherry casks for a period before bottling. This time, to quote the press release, the malt

spends a minimum of 14 years in bourbon barrels to give it the Knappogue Castle signature smooth taste; it’s then combined with more Irish single malt aged in casks specially infused for Knappogue Castle with Oloroso Sherry.

It seems, therefore, to be a vatting of bourbon-matured and sherry-aged malt. Though it doesn't say so in the press release, we can reasonably assume that this malt was distilled at Bushmills.

Another change is the bottling strength: 46% ABV (compared to 40% for the previous incarnations). This is the strength typically used to avoid having to chill-filter the whiskey. (Below this strength, the risk is that the whiskey will become cloudy at low temperatures unless it is filtered before bottling.) And, indeed, the label declares that the whiskey has not been chill-filtered. It's a good sign when the maker chooses flavour and mouthfeel over cosmetics.

Speaking of cosmetics, Knappogue Castle has traditionally eschewed caramel colouring and I'm assuming this whiskey is also undoctored in that regard. It shouldn't need a touch-up with the sherry contribution anyway.

I haven't had this whiskey in my glass yet, but the press release provides a brief tasting note:

The taste is rich and fruity with hints of green apple and grapefruit zest, enhanced with vanilla notes from the charred oak casks.

Knappogue Castle is a US-based brand so availability there is always good, especially in the North-East. I'm told it's already on sale in CA, CT, DC, IL, MD, MA, MN, MS, MO, NH, NJ, NYC and RI, with more states to come. It goes for a very accessible $60 or so (the last Twin Wood, the 17-year old, was $100). There are about 2,000 (unnumbered) bottles in this release.

Of course the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dublin has snagged a few bottles too. I see it there at €65.

The Irishman 12 year old single malt

2013-01-15T02:50:00.001Z

I missed the new Irishman 12 year old when it was released last November, but it's still available, luckily.

All photos courtesy of The Hot Irishman Ltd

Let's do a quick rundown of the facts...

Type:	Unpeated single malt, triple distilled
Age:	12 years
ABV:	43%
Distillery:	Guess!
Bottled:	November 2012
No. of bottles:	714
Price:	€70
Other:	Not chill-filtered, natural colour
Cask Type:	First-fill bourbon
Cask Nos.:	70691, 70692

It's two first-fill bourbon casks vatted together. As usual with The Irishman bottlings, I'm not allowed to say exactly where it was made. Try to think of an Irish distillery that releases triple-distilled single malts.

Here are some tasting notes supplied by the company:

Nose

Incredibly full aroma, no mistaking the influence of the ex-bourbon casks with the light sweet spicy notes of vanilla, cinnamon and even a tincture of clove. All balanced with apples and pears, some charred wood and freshly cut hay.

Taste

The initial sip is a burst of rich flavours, sweet with vanilla delicately bolstered by black peppercorns, reluctantly giving way to a succulent fruity mid-section before slowly fading to leave a very satisfying grassy cereal conclusion.

Finish

The fullness of the body fades quite quickly but leaves behind a lingering succulent flavour of barley and oak.

600 bottles of this went to the Celtic Whiskey Shop, with the remainder held back by the company. It won't be exported or available anywhere else in Ireland (not even at the airport).

The label is quite a departure for this family of whiskeys:

I think this is my new favourite Irish whiskey label. The personal, handwritten message on the back reminds me of Booker's Bourbon.

Brand Manager, Shane Fitzharris, tells me that The Irishman is getting a complete rebrand this year. Business is up 30% for the company over the last year and they now have sales ambassadors on the ground in key markets such as Germany and the US. Shane hints that 2013 will be their most exciting year yet so watch this space!

Say hello to Shane if you see him! And try whatever he's pouring, it's bound to be something good.

Shane

Glendalough Poitín

2013-01-12T02:47:00.001Z

Glendalough Poitín slipped quietly onto the shelves of the Celtic Whiskey Shop just before Christmas (and promptly sold out).

This week, I met Brian Fagan and Barry Gallagher, two of the four guys behind this new arrival. The story of how they came to this point has a nice parallel with that of John Teeling, and the foundation of Cooley. Teeling wrote an academic paper on the Irish whiskey industry while studying at Harvard in the early 1970s. His analysis convinced him to start up his own distillery as soon as he could scrape together the funds.

Brian and Barry also have a professional background in financial research which has involved crunching the numbers on the spirits business. This is the moment, they have decided, to jump off the sidelines and put theory into practice. (Actually, Brian had already made a slightly earlier leap by launching the Five Lamps craft beer last year.)

The guys can quote numbers but I could hear, between the figures, a far more sentimental motivation - to reclaim a portion of Ireland's lost distilling heritage, to pour a glass of something great and Irish for the discerning drinkers of the world. They reminded me how distilling arrived in Ireland, with the monks, and how the craft of poitín was kept alive through the centuries, in the valleys, out of sight of officialdom.

The monks and the valleys inspired the name: Glendalough. St Kevin himself graces the label.

Barry and Brian very kindly left me with a bottle and I have been getting to know the spirit over the last few days. The nose would fool me, if I didn't know what was in the glass, into thinking I had before me a glass of Riesling wine. Gooseberries and petrochemicals. It's a heady aroma I really like.

It has a creamy mouthfeel and tastes of lychees and liquorice. There is a beery, slightly salty finish.

Glendalough has a few tricks for mitigating the raw taste of spirit straight off the still.

First, it's bottled at 40% ABV. A good call, I think. I have been sipping away as I write, for inspiration. I'm taking it neat, and it's going down just fine.

It is also aged in virgin Irish oak, a nice touch. This part of the story remains somewhat obscure for now. The spirit is made under contract by West Cork Distillers and I've yet to get a peek into their process. It hasn't had any effect on colour that I can detect but I presume it has mellowed the flavour somewhat.

Finally, there is a secret ingredient: sugar beet! The label only mentions malted barley so I'm guessing there is just a small proportion of sugar beet in the mash. Still, I'm ridiculously excited that beet (a very familiar crop in Ireland) has finally appeared in spirit form in this country.

The product comes with various serving suggestions: neat, on ice, with soda or, as the neck label has it, as a "Pot & Coke". It can be used in cocktails, of course, easily substituting for either vodka or whiskey in classic recipes.

It goes for about €35 in the Celtic Whiskey Shop and it should appear in Dublin Airport some time soon.

Glendalough Poitín is a great addition to a growing category. The company name on the bottle, by the way, is the Glendalough Irish Whiskey Company, which surely hints at further exciting products down the road.

Celtic Cask

2012-12-31T01:50:00.000Z

The Celtic Whiskey Shop has quietly revived a lost tradition in Irish whiskey and is creating some exciting new whiskeys in the process.

Back in the day, the big wine importers like Mitchells and Findlaters would import sherry by the cask. When the cask was empty they would bring it to a whiskey distillery to be filled with spirit and then consign it to their own warehouse to mature. That practice died out by the 1970s as both the wine and whiskey makers switched to bottling their own products.

The Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street is really just the whiskey half of a larger shop. The other half is called Wines on the Green and it has developed strong relationships with various wine houses around Europe. As a result, they are able to procure casks used during the wines' maturation and bring them, empty, into Ireland.

The first few casks were sent to Cooley to finish some of their malt whiskey and bottled under Cooley brands. There were two Ànima Negra-finished Tyrconnell single malts (2010 and 2011) and one Emilio Hidalgo Amontillado-finished Connemara single malt (2011).

Now the shop has gone one step further, and launched its own label: Celtic Cask. The first two releases are called Aon (meaning "one") and Dó (meaning "two"), which bodes well for a long, continuing series of bottlings. I will describe these whiskeys in the next two posts.

Both of the new releases are Cooley-distilled spirit but the shop's owner, Ally Alpine, says he has three different types of whiskey from three different Irish distilleries currently maturing in casks from Madeira, Marsala, Burgundy, Rhone, Jerez, Tuscany and Mallorca (more of the Ànima Negra).

With its own label and bottling arrangements, and sourcing from multiple distilleries, it is fair to describe the Celtic Whiskey Shop as an "independent bottler" of the sort we know from Scotland, for example. And by going the extra mile, and sourcing its own casks, it is also restoring the contribution that the wine merchant made historically to the taste of Irish whiskey.

See also: Celtic Cask Aon 1996 Single Malt, Celtic Cask Dó 2001 Single Malt

Celtic Cask Aon 1996 Single Malt

2012-12-31T01:45:00.000Z

Celtic Cask Aon (which means "one" in Irish) is the first of the Celtic Whiskey Shop's bottlings of whiskey under its own label.

Courtesy of New Graphic, designers of the label

Type:	Unpeated single malt
ABV:	46%
Distillery:	Cooley
Distilled:	31st October 1996
Bottled:	3rd December 2012
No. of bottles:	711
Price:	€125
Other:	Not chill-filtered, natural colour
Cask No.:	Cask No.1, Rotation VR10/02

The malt whiskey was initially aged for three years in second fill bourbon casks and then moved to fresh bourbon casks for the next 11 years. (The distillery might intervene like this if the first cask isn't working enough magic on the spirit.) In July 2010, three of these casks were emptied to fill an 80 year-old Palo Cortado Sherry cask from Bodegas Emilio Hidalgo. This sherry cask was made from American oak.

Bodegas Emilio Hidalgo is a small family winery founded in 1874 and located in the heart of Jerez de la Frontera.

Palo Cortado is a rare variety of sherry that is initially aged under flor (a film of yeast) to become a fino or amontillado, but inexplicably loses this veil of flor and begins ageing oxidatively as an oloroso. The result is a wine with some of the richness of oloroso and some of the crispness of amontillado. Only 1-2% of the grapes pressed for sherry develop into Palo Cortado.

Courtesy of New Graphic

Tasting notes (from the Celtic Whiskey Shop):

Appearance

Pale bronze in colour with a slight reddish hue.

Nose

Sweet exotic fruits, roasted nuts, sultanas, baked apples, toasty oak and a touch of demerara sugar.

Taste

Incredible mouth-feel with a thick, viscous texture. Flavours of warm spices, toffee, creme caramel, baked fruits, sultanas, dates, chocolate brownies and walnuts.

Finish

Very smooth with more of the toffee and chocolate notes persisting towards the end.

Celtic Cask Dó 2001 Single Malt

2012-12-31T01:30:00.000Z

Celtic Cask Dó (which means "two" in Irish) is the second of the Celtic Whiskey Shop's bottlings of whiskey under its own label.

Courtesy of New Graphic, designers of the label

Type:	Peated single malt
ABV:	46%
Distillery:	Cooley
Distilled:	13th March 2001
Bottled:	3rd December 2012
No. of bottles:	349
Price:	€89.95
Other:	Not chill-filtered, natural colour
Cask No.:	Cask No.8, Rotation VR11/03

The whiskey was initially aged for 10 years in a second fill bourbon cask from Heaven Hill distillery. In October 2011, this cask was emptied to fill an Ànima Negra Mallorcan red wine cask.

Ànima Negra was founded in 1994 and is owned by two self-taught friends who thought the wines of their native Mallorca weren't reaching their full potential. Using indigenous grape varieties, particularly Callet from select parcels of old vines, the wine is aged in new French oak for 18 months.

Tasting notes (from the Celtic Whiskey Shop):

Appearance

Bronze in colour with a reddish hue.

Nose

Peat fires, old rope, sack cloth, beeswax, candyfloss and dried fruits.

Taste

Dry & bold on the palate with an instant punch of peat smoke. With time it becomes more sweet fruit dominated with flavours of dried fruits, red apples, orange peel and a hint of toasty oak.

Finish

The smoke persists right through to the finish along with some dry oaky flavours.

New distillery proposed on Horse Island

2012-12-24T20:04:00.001Z

Irish whiskey fans just got a nice Christmas present. A planning application for a new distillery has just been lodged. It's on Horse Island, just off Schull, in County Cork. Is this the beginning of an Irish Islands whiskey region?

Horse Island, one of the Roaring Water Bay group of islands, is privately owned by Adrian Fitzgibbon. It's very close to the mainland and recent census results put its population at just two. In the mid-19th century, however, there was a copper mine on the island, and as many as 137 residents.

View Larger Map

The application has been lodged by Fitzgibbon's company, Roaring Water Farm & Enterprises. (I don't think the new venture has any connection to the Roaring Water Bay Spirits Company, original developers of the Clontarf whiskey brand.) Some highlights:

There will be a mash house (157 sq m), fermentation house (229 sq m), still house (258 sq m), visitor centre & café (94 sq m), visitor "whiskey bar" (19 sq m), two cask stores (805 sq m). All buildings are one or two storeys in height.
The still house will have three stills, making triple-distilled, pot still whiskey (the application is quite specific on this point; there is no mention of malt whiskey). This will employ 12 on the island initially, rising to 20. Most will make the short commute from the mainland.
Grain will be delivered via the existing roll-on, roll-off ferry. Deliveries will be weekly/fortnightly at the outset, increasing to twice-weekly at full capacity. Grain will be stored in two 32-tonne silos.
Process water will come from a well and rainwater harvesting. Cooling water will be drawn from the sea.
Maturation will take place on the island, in oak casks stacked on pallets in the cask stores.
Spent grains will be fed to livestock on the island.

The Sunday Times Business supplement had a few extra details. Fitzgibbon hopes to get a drinks group on board once planning permission has been secured and begin distilling in the first quarter of 2014. The capacity will be 100,000 cases (one case = 9 litres) of whiskey annually.

No whiskey names have been trademarked yet (I like the sound of "Horse Whiskey" but that's pretty close to an existing Scottish brand).

[To see the planning application yourself, visit Cork County Council's planning website and search for application number 12752.]

Teeling Whiskey Company Poitín

2012-12-14T02:04:00.001Z

I was at the launch of a new spirit in WJ Kavanagh's on Thursday evening. It's the second release from Teeling, the first being the Hybrid Malt Whiskey.

This isn't whiskey, exactly, but poitín. That name has the same resonance in Ireland as "moonshine" does in the United States. It can be distilled from various ingredients but this one is made solely from grain, just like whiskey. Indeed, it's made at the Cooley distillery and is the same spirit that they transform into whiskey by maturing in casks for a period of years.

Cooley has been down this road themselves with a single pot still poitín. That was pretty full-on and, to be honest, a little bit raw for my taste (it's for good reason we let spirit sit in oak before we drink it).

Teeling have taken another approach. Their poitín is a blend of 80% grain spirit and 20% malt spirit, a proportion not untypical of a basic blended whiskey. That milder grain spirit makes it quite palatable neat, and it's gentler on the nose and tastebuds than the 61.5% ABV would suggest.

On the nose I get banana bread and fresh grass. The taste is peppery with a little mint, and it develops into a lingering mild lemon cheesecake.

Since poitín just doesn't exist yet as a drinks category in either the on- or off-trade in Ireland, the big questions are: who is going to drink this, and how are they going to drink it?

These are open questions. Serious whiskey fans will want to sample it as an unaged "whiskey"; it illuminates the effect of oak by the complete absence of a contribution from wood. I can't guess, however, how gin and vodka drinkers will take to it. It has a flavour not easily masked in a long drink, which I regard as a positive, but might prove a challenge.

The host pub for the launch, WJ Kavanagh's, perhaps pointed the way with some cocktails developed for the occasion. I tried a Jack Rose, a cocktail normally based on applejack (a distilled apple spirit). Michael Foggarty - proprietor, whiskey expert and mixologist - substituted poitín that had been macerating the pulp of apples (that he picked himself in Wicklow) for 10 days. The apple purée and poitín were then combined with grenadine and apple juice. Truly delicious.

Jack Rose

There was also a "Christmas Cosmopolitan" that is on the menu at WJ Kavanagh's until the 24th of December. That's the only poitín cocktail currently available in the pub but Michael will continue to tweak his cocktail recipes and they will appear on the menu in the new year.

We were also treated to various finger foods that incorporated the poitín. Both WJ Kavanagh's and its sister pub, L Mulligan Grocer, have serious gastro chops so these were, of course, very appetising. The poitín will likely continue to make guest appearances in the pubs' dishes.

If the poitín is a hit then Teeling will happily keep bottling it. It goes for between €30 and €35 for 50cl, and will be available from the Celtic Whiskey Shop and Dublin Airport.

Beam acquires 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey

2012-12-07T14:49:00.000Z

Beam - owners of Cooley Distillery - has just acquired the 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey brand, along with the services of its creator, Kieran Folliard, as Chief Irish Whiskey Ambassador in the US.

I'm happy to hear that. I've never had the opportunity to try this US-based whiskey brand but news of Kieran Folliard's whiskey endeavours has travelled all the way back to his native Ireland. I've mentioned them several times around here before.

Kieran was in the pub business in Minneapolis until 2011. His bar, The Local, used to win the prize every year for shifting the most Jameson of any bar, anywhere in the world. Mostly in the form of a signature drink, The Big Ginger, containing whiskey, ginger ale, lemon, lime and ice.

He sold his share of the business to launch a new whiskey brand (licensing laws in Minnesota meant he could not do both). This was 2 Gingers, named for his red-haired mother and aunt.

It's a four year old Cooley blend, a 30/70 malt/grain mix. Unusually for a Cooley blend though, it has a little sherry-aged spirit.

Beam took over Cooley in early 2012, and cancelled the supply of whiskey to private labels to increase capacity for its own brands. I don't know what the contractual arrangements were for 2 Gingers but I was hoping that wouldn't be the end of the road for Kieran's story.

Clearly it isn't, and Kieran Folliard must be pleased with the new arrangement since he stays on to apply his considerable promotional skills to 2 Gingers and to the rest of the Beam Irish whiskey stable.

I look forward to tasting 2 Gingers on this side of the Atlantic.

Drinking for your country - 2013

2012-12-06T05:31:00.001Z

It was Budget Day in Ireland yesterday, an annual festival during which we turn our pockets inside out and dance for the Minister for Finance. He announced a hefty hike in excise duty on spirits, effetive immediately. Let's survey the damage.

Yesterday, excise duty on spirits was €31.13 per litre of alcohol. Today, it is €36.85, a jump of 18%. Let's see the effect on a typical 700ml bottle of whiskey with an ABV of 40%. We'll include VAT (23%) because it's applied on top of the duty.

Yesterday
Tax = €31.13 x 0.7 x 0.4 x 1.23 = €10.72

Today
Tax = €36.85 x 0.7 x 0.4 x 1.23 = €12.69

The typical bottle of spirits, then, is €1.97 more expensive today than it was yesterday.

Let's look at it a different way. If a bottle of whiskey costs €20, how much of that is VAT + excise duty?

VAT = €3.74
Duty = €10.32
Total = €14.06

In other words, 70% of the cost of a €20 bottle of whiskey is tax. Of course any profits that the manufacturer, distributor and retailer make on that bottle are also taxed. It is more theft than taxation, at these levels.

The great fear of ministers fiddling with alcohol duty is that they will send the citizenry fleeing to Northern Ireland to purchase their hooch, enriching Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs instead of our own. Here's the duty + VAT calculation for the UK, where the duty rate is £26.81 (€33.04) and VAT is 20%.

On that bottle of spirits, 700ml, 40%:

Tax = €33.04 x 0.7 x 0.4 x 1.2 = €11.10

That's still a little more than Ireland. I'm sure that's not an accident.

Dingle Distillery

2012-12-01T16:12:00.000Z

Hundreds showed up on Thursday night to witness an extremely rare occasion in Ireland: the launch of a new whiskey distillery. I have a few photos from the event...

Here's the converted mill on the edge of Dingle town with guests arriving, enjoying some chowder and live traditional music:

These are the wooden mashtun and fermenting vessels.

Here are the three whiskey stills, designed by John McDougall to produce a unique flavour profile for Dingle Whiskey:

Here's John himself, monitoring the cut from the second distillation stage. Part of the art of distillation is capturing only the best part of the distillate, which then continues to the next stage (another distillation or maturation in wood). There is nothing automated in this distillery.

Behind John is Oliver Hughes, founder of The Porterhouse Group and prime mover of the whole venture. It was Oliver's strong connection with Dingle that let to the siting of the distillery in the town.

On the night, not enough of the second stage distilled spirit had yet been collected to fully charge the third pot still. These three casks stood ready, though, to receive the final spirit. I called by the distillery when leaving Dingle the next morning to make a final check on progress. According to John, it would be Saturday, December 1st, at the earliest before the third distillation was ready to go.

There is one more pot still tucked away, below and to the side of the other pots. It's tricky to get a photograph of it now because the distillery is tightly laid out with the pots, mashtun, fermenters, receivers, pumps, etc, nested within a lattice of pipework.

This is the gin and vodka still, known as "Oisín":

A very fine grain neutral spirit sourced from Sweden is the base for both the gin and vodka (without a column still, the Dingle Distillery cannot produce neutral spirit).

In the case of the gin, the botanicals are steeped in the spirit during distillation. Even more flavour is extracted by inserting a tray of botanicals above the pot, through which the alcohol vapours pass before condensing.

This is a gin very much "of Dingle". The botanicals are (from the bottle label):

... nine traditional and locally grown & harvested botanicals: rowan berry, juniper, fuschia, bog myrtle, heather, chervil, hawthorn, angelica and coriander. The resulting distillate is cut with pure water drawn from our well 240 feet below our distillery.

I wasn't tasting under laboratory conditions but I noticed that the juniper is quiet in the mix, allowing grassy notes and even a mild citrus (let's say pomelo) to come through. I'm not sure they are entirely finished tweaking the balance so it may yet change.

The vodka is distilled in Oisín too, then charcoal filtered. I have little knowledge of vodka but I have never heard anyone suggest it should be savoured neat. This one has a surprisingly smooth and pleasant taste though. Michael Lawlor of the Celtic Whiskey Shop immediately picked out an aniseed flavour and he was absolutely right.

The (hand-filled) bottles have a handsome, chiselled look. The gin bottle seems impossibly translucent, refracting its surroundings like the cloaked alien in Predator. The vodka one has the blue cast of an antique medicine bottle. I like seeing glass - a truly amazing, under-appreciated material - featured like this, and not obscured by labelling.

The final approach to Dingle town requires driving over a mountain. At this end of the year, the road was mostly empty. I couldn't help thinking on the way up that there really couldn't be anything on the other side. But suddenly, there it is: a town, with the Atlantic Ocean right in front of it and the mountains pressing up behind it. It's wonderful.

The Dingle Distillery will acquire all of the romantic associations of its setting: the ocean air, the landscape, the remoteness. The company logo is a Wren Boy with a sheaf of grain in one hand, a scythe in the other. Wren's Day (the day after Christmas Day) is a big celebration in Dingle, I hear. Though an Irish tradition it's quite exotic even to many Irish people (I have never seen Wren Boys myself in Dublin).

The part of Dingle where the distillery is located is called Milltown. Looking at an old map of the area I can see there was a "corn and tuck mill" on the same site in 1841, and probably earlier ("corn" is any kind of grain in Ireland, "tuck" is wool-combing). It was still a corn mill when the 20th Century arrived, judging by another map.

There are traces of this history in the building's stonework and in this big waterwheel outside:

There is a corresponding wheel on the inside, which you can see in the photo of the gin still, above. The building has been made weatherproof and enlarged with corrugated iron. It's purely utilitarian but there is potential for a more picturesque restoration down the line.

There is a bit of a foodie culture happening in Dingle that a local whiskey would slot right into. There is the Dingle Food Festival each year, for example. Before I left Dingle yesterday, I picked up some locally-made charcuterie, oak-smoked fish and cheese, all great accompaniments for whiskey.

All of this - the location, the history, the local artisan community - makes Dingle, despite the youth of the venture, a true home of the independent, Irish craft of whiskey-making.

You can still become one of the Founding Fathers of the distillery by buying one of the first 500 casks up front. There was a large display on the wall listing all of the Founding Fathers so far (including, sadly, Hugh O'Regan, whose funeral was yesterday). If you really needed one more reason to visit a beautiful part of Ireland, then how about to check on the maturation of your very own whiskey?

The future of Tullamore Dew - Part 2

2012-11-25T20:32:00.000Z

When William Grant announced their decision to build a distillery in Ireland, it was not at all inevitable that it would happen in Tullamore. The planning documentation reveals that there were another dozen or so sites in the south and east of Ireland shortlisted for consideration. Criteria included proximity to the existing Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre and Clonmel bottling plant, and connectivity to Scotland and export markets.

The Tullamore site is quite boggy, apparently, and thus presents some construction challenges. What clinched it was the golden marketing opportunity of having "Tullamore Dew" made in Tullamore. At least, that's how the documentation puts it. If you talk to William Grant people, they cite their family-owned company's appreciation and respect for heritage. I like that. It's something you can't always rely on in the multinational drinks industry (remember Diageo weighing up whether to pull Guinness production out of Dublin?).

The sites that William Grant passed up, then, weren't the preferred fit for Tullamore Dew, but they might suit another company. The planning docs go into some detail on these other locations so, if you happen to be looking for one, William Grant has done much of the legwork for you.

Here's a visualisation of the proposed distillery at Tullamore. I took it from the planning submission, and added labels.

Proposed distillery. Click to enlarge.

It will be built in three phases. Some highlights from each stage:

2013-2014
Pot & malt distillery building, cereal silos, filling store, two maturation warehouses.
2019-2021
Grain distillery, visitor centre, cooperage, dunnage, the "Three Sisters", two more maturation warehouses.
2021-2022
Nine more maturation warehouses.

24/7 operation is envisaged, with four weeks shutdown each year for maintenance. It will employ about 70 people when fully operational.

No provision has been made in the planning documents for any further development on the site.

Pot & Malt Distillery
Unsurprisingly, Tullamore Dew will remain a triple distilled whiskey. The plans show two wash stills, one intermediate still, two spirit stills and two "possible extra stills". Still capacities proposed are between 9,000 and 21,000 litres (compare that with Midleton's giant 75,000 litre stills).

Maturation Warehouses
Thirteen of these are planned. Each is 75m x 67m (5,025 square metres) with a sloped roof. The average height of a warehouse is 10.4m.

Each warehouse can hold about 55,100 ex-bourbon casks (190 litres apiece). (In reality, of course, there will be a certain proportion of larger sherry butts.)

Visitor Centre
The distillery will be open to tourists. 40,000 a year are projected, catered for by 70 visitor car spaces and three coach spaces. The distillery is central to William Grant's marketing strategy so they say the publicly accessible areas will be designed and landscaped to the highest standards.

The visitor centre will have audio-visual and interactive displays but tours will also incorporate the pot still building, cooperage and dunnage.

Three Sisters
The "Three Sisters" is an administrative extension to the distillery building that doubles as a visual flourish. It has three steeply-raked "pagoda" roofs, intended to recall old-fashioned malting kilns. Once upon a time, distilleries malted their own barley but it's normally outsourced these days to modern malting plants.

As architectural pastiche, I feel these pagoda roofs are a smidge heavy-handed. A working distillery shouldn't really need to imitate the appearance of a distillery. But they will certainly catch the eye of passing traffic and they will help to tell the malting part of the whiskey-making story.

Dunnage
The dunnage warehouse seems to be aimed squarely at visitors. Not much is said about it in the planning documents but it will be constructed in a very traditional manner and my guess is that it will represent the maturation part of the whiskey story for visitors.

Cooperage
This is slated for Phase 2 but even before then some coopering will take place in the filling store. It will be a true, working cooperage, viewable on the public tour from a gallery.

Coopering is a seriously endangered trade in Ireland. Beam almost pushed it off the cliff entirely when they closed the cooperage at Kilbeggan. Kudos to William Grant for keeping it at the heart of the distillery.

See also:
The future of Tullamore Dew - Part 1

The future of Tullamore Dew - Part 1

2012-11-24T20:35:00.001Z

There are three kinds of whiskey in the classic Tullamore Dew blend: malt, pot still and grain. Tullamore Dew doesn't have its own distillery so all of these components are supplied under contract by Irish Distillers (IDL).
When the new owners of the Tullamore Dew brand, William Grant, announced earlier this year that they would bring distilling back in-house, the press release mentioned only pot still and malt distillation. It wasn't clear if the brand would remain dependent on IDL's Midleton plant for its grain whiskey supply.

I've been wading through the recently lodged planning application for the new Tullamore Dew distillery. It's a hefty read that bounces around from boreholes to bats to the Bronze Age. But it also reveals some of William Grant's intentions as far as the whiskey is concerned.

There will, we now know, be a column still for making grain spirit, but not until the second phase of the build, to be completed in 2021.

Phase 1, to be operational by July 2014, will see pot stills alone producing 1.84 million litres of pot still / malt alcohol annually, enough for 1.5m cases of whiskey (when combined with grain whiskey from Midleton).

Phase 2a, commencing construction in 2019, will double this capacity to 3m cases.

Phase 2b, complete in 2021, will add the grain distillation for a total output of 11.94 million litres of alcohol (Mla). Because the increased production simply displaces the Midleton grain supply, output will remain at 3m cases annually.

(I think we can infer something interesting at this point. We know that Tullamore Dew contains pot still, malt and grain whiskeys but we don't know in what ratio. From the Phase 3 figures, we see that 3m cases of whiskey requires 3.68 Mla pot/malt and 8.26 Mla grain. Almost all of that whiskey will be the basic blend so I make the proportion of grain to pot/malt in that blend 69% to 31%.)

For comparison, the Midleton distillery currently produces 33.5Mla per annum and is undergoing expansion to a final capacity of 64Mla. That's still well over 5 times the capacity of Tullamore at full flow.

There are some other, obvious, questions regarding what kind of whiskey we are likely to see from the new distillery. For example, will they attempt to recreate the current flavour profile of Tullamore Dew?

There is no answer to this in the planning documents but the intention to hew to the same basic blend of malt, pot still and grain whiskeys is pretty clear. I assume they will want to keep the current age profile of 4-7 years also, for cost reasons. I hope, within these constraints, that they produce the best whiskey possible, rather than trying to reproduce the flavour of Midleton's output.

The other question we all have is: once Tullamore Dew has full control over its own production, what exciting new whiskeys will we see? There is good news on this score. From the planning submission:

Irish whiskey is becoming more sophisticated due to new premium range entrants such as single Malt and Pure Pot Still. It is William Grant & Sons' intention to enter both of these premium segments in a meaningful way.

Glasses up!

See also:
The future of Tullamore Dew - Part 2

IWS Midleton Single Cask

2012-10-30T23:00:00.000Z

Irish Whiskey Society members have shared many fine bottles of whiskey over the last four years. Our hidden agenda, of course, has always been to finagle casks from distillers' warehouses to bottle as our own. We have combined with other societies in the past to pull this off but tonight we got our first true exclusive society bottling.

The fairy godmother in this story is Irish Distillers (IDL). Back in April, we toured their bottling plant in Dublin and afterwards were treated to dinner and a drop or two at the Old Jameson Distillery. Among the whiskeys were three drawn directly from casks maturing in Midleton. We were invited to vote on our favourite, at which point it was revealed that our choice would be bottled exclusively for the society.

This was quite the honour because Midleton is a huge operation, part of one of the biggest drinks multinationals; they do very, very few single cask releases. They are generous supporters of the society though and, as true masters of their craft, they also like the occasional opportunity to showcase one of their many fine component pot still whiskeys.

Tonight we were back in the Old Jameson Distillery for the unveiling. In front of each of us were three glasses containing our new whiskey and, for comparison, Midleton Very Rare 2012 and Powers John's Lane Release.

As you might expect from a whiskey society, the label on this new bottling is very detailed, right down to the location of the cask in the warehouse. The first-fill, ex-bourbon cask was filled in January 1995 and emptied only a couple of weeks ago, making this a 17 year old whiskey.

It was bottled at House of Donohoe in Waterford, a small sample being sent back to Midleton to have its alcohol content measured (not as simple as I thought; apparently the wood adds dissolved solids that throw off the measurement). With the number of bottles and the ABV known, the labels could then be printed and applied.

There are 204 bottles, at a cask strength of 55.2%. It is available only to society members.

According to IDL's Liam Donegan, it's a different style of pot still whiskey (heavier) to that found in previous single cask releases from Midleton. It is, therefore, a unique whiskey.

On the nose, people found ripe banana, spice, an underlay of blackcurrant. We were all struck by an unusual creamy mouthfeel, presumably due to the heavy, oily pot still. The vanilla and caramel you would anticipate from this type of cask were present, but restrained. The official tasting notes (by IWS committee member, Jim Clarke) run thus:

Nose: The immediate note of ripe bananas gives way to a toffee and creamy fudge, followed by an oily spiciness. Evidence of floral notes, reminiscent of heather.

Taste: A slightly sour cherry flavour, followed by vanilla and toffee fudge. Water reveals high floral notes, including rosewater.

Finish: A touch of sugar syrup combines with a fascinating herbal element akin to sage.

It's a complex, pleasing whiskey with lots to savour. "Powerful, but refined", to quote fellow member, Ken Mawhinney. I agree.

Speaking as an ordinary member of the Irish Whiskey Society, I'd like to congratulate the president, Leo Phelan, and the bottling sub-committee for all the hard work that went into organising the label design, the finances, the distribution and so on. And of course I want to thank Liam Donegan and David Byrne of IDL for making it all happen on the whiskey and bottling side, as well as for hosting the launch. It's a huge step forward for the society.

Writers Tears Cask Strength (sampled)

2012-10-30T15:30:00.001Z

Shane from Writers Tears kindly sent me a sample of the new Cask Strength I wrote about last week.

Two things struck me abut this whiskey. First, the malty, grainy nose that reminded me of new make spirit. There is still some of that fiery freshness in the taste too, though I'm sure this isn't a young whiskey.

Second, this is perhaps the driest whiskey I've ever sampled. I don't mean that as a euphemism for overly woody or tannic but there is not a hint of sweetness or citrus, for example, and only the merest touch of vanilla. The lack of vanilla aside, you can certainly taste the first-fill bourbon casks that housed this spirit.

So, grain and wood. That's pretty much whiskey stripped back to its essentials. The dryness makes me think this whiskey would make a good accompaniment for, say, a very soft cheese like Cooleeney. Your knife may struggle but the whiskey will cut right through it.

Coming events

2012-10-23T15:22:00.001+01:00

Here's a list of the spirits-related events coming up in Ireland that I know about.

Wednesday, 24th October

Tullamore Dew Tasting
6:30pm
O'Neill's, Suffolk Street, Dublin 2
For more information contact O'Neill's Bar on (01) 679 3656.

Thursday, 25th October

My Heart's in the Highlands
7:30pm
Brooks Hotel, Drury Street, Dublin 2
This month's Irish Whiskey Society tasting. Open to members (€15) and non-members (€25). Booking in advance.

Saturday, 27th October

Beer, Cheese & Whiskey
3:00pm
L. Mulligan. Grocer., 8 Stoneybatter, Dublin 7
In association with Bord Bia, L. Mulligan. Grocer. presents three of Ireland's great products: farmhouse cheese, Irish whiskey and craft beers. Does the Carrowhilly Gouda prefer to snuggle up to a Belfast Blonde or a Jameson Crested Ten, will the Fivemiletown Goat's cheese prefer a Redbreast or a Red Ale? Join the Mulligan's team and find out! Contact table[AT]lmulligangrocer.com for more information.

Japanese Whiskey Workshop
4:00pm
The Bernard Shaw, 12 Richmond Street South, Dublin 8
A small taste 'n' talk on Japanese whiskey will take place in the Bernard Shaw pub as part of the Beatyard Festival. Taking you from 1917 when a Japanese chemistry student working in a Glaswegian distillery brought the secrets of the Hazelburn distillery back East and created a new chapter in whiskey. You will be tasting three highly rated Japanese whiskeys: Nikka, Yamazaki 12 year old (Japan's No.1 whiskey) and Yoichi. There will also be free Sushi. Details.

Sunday, 28th October

Longueville House Harvest Lunch & Cider Making Tour
From 10:00am
Longueville House, Mallow, Co Cork
With the guidance of Dan Duggan, Longueville's head brandy distiller and cider brewer, you can discover the pleasure of this exciting process at Longueville House where it is all made. Afterwards Chef/Proprietor William O'Callaghan and his team will prepare a special meal which includes the best available from the Walled Garden and Estate including a free range "Pig on Spit" and Longueville House Cider. Details

Whisky For Dafties
9:00pm
W. J. Kavanagh's, 4 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin 1
Fresh from a sell out show at the Edinburgh & Adelaide Fringe, Alan Anderson brings his whisky-based comedy to W. J. Kavanagh's on the Sunday evening of the bank holiday weekend for a whisky-soaked evening of comedy, which includes several drams. Booking in advance (€15).

Monday, 29th October

Around the World with Jim Beam
8:00pm
The Palace Bar, Fleet Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
From America to Scotland via Canada and Ireland, join Beam Global Brand Ambassador John Cashman as he guides you through the Jim Beam portfolio of whiskeys. To book, call The Palace Bar at (01) 671 7388.

Tuesday, 30th October

Launch of Irish Whiskey Society Bottling
5:30pm
Old Jameson Distillery, Bow Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7
Launch of the Irish Whiskey Society's new single cask bottling from the Midleton Distillery.
Members Only. Booking in advance.

Writers Tears Tasting
6:00pm
Bowes Bar, 31 Fleet Street, Dublin 2
Shane Fitzharris from The Irishman & Writers Tears will introduce some of their unique bottlings (including, I believe, the new Writers Tears Cask Strength release).

Wednesday, 31st October

Ian Buxton Tasting & Signing
8:00pm
W. J. Kavanagh’s, 4 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin 1
Ian Buxton, awarding winning whisky author returns to Dublin to launch his latest work "101 World Whiskies to try Before You Die". On the evening Ian will talk us through (while tasting!) some of the Irish entries to his book as well as whisky from Holland, India and Finland. If you don’t already have a copy of this little gem of a book, they will be on sale at the event at a discount rate and Ian will be on hand to sign it for you. Booking in advance (€15).

Thursday, 8th November

Christmas Spirits Tasting
Against the Grain, 11 Wexford Street, Dublin 2
A tasting of some of the Celtic Whiskey Shop's range of festive spirits. To include Armagnac Delord, Cognac Park, Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum, Dictador Rum, Nardini Grappa and more. €25, tickets from the shop.

Writers Tears Cask Strength 2012

2012-10-22T21:00:00.000+01:00

There is a new Writers Tears Cask Strength coming next week. It's 52% ABV and is, like the standard bottling, a blend of pot still and malt whiskeys, entirely matured in bourbon casks (all first-fill here).

There was a Writers Tears Cask Strength last year too but this is a fresh batch of 1,800 bottles. The packaging has been updated too. The simple wooden framing of the bottle is very elegant, I think.

180 bottles will remain in Ireland (find them at the Celtic Whiskey Shop and airports) but the rest are destined for Germany, France, Ukraine, Holland and Australia. The price in Ireland is around the €120 mark, which is where Writers Tears / The Irishman normally pitches its premium offerings. There is clearly a healthy demand for this bottling because the release is a full 600 bottles larger than last year's.

By the way, that 12 year old Irishman single malt flagged here back in June is still on the release schedule, to appear at the start of the new year, perhaps.

Teeling's Hybrid Malt

2012-10-17T18:25:00.000+01:00

It's here! The Teeling Whiskey Company has launched its first whiskey, the Hybrid Malt, Edition No. 1.

Although Teeling is a new company, this is a whiskey with a past. In 2004, Bruichladdich launched the first of a series of "Celtic Nations" blended malts. It contained 85% 10 year old Bruichladdich malt (including, it is said, a little of their more heavily-peated Port Charlotte style) and 15% Cooley peated malt (ie Connemara). The Scottish Whisky Association (SWA) threw a fit at this "product of Scotland & Ireland" and the rest of the series was shelved.

Two hogsheads of this chimera were left orphaned in an Islay warehouse until, eight years later, they were adopted by Jack Teeling, on the lookout for something a little unusual. This is the new Hybrid Malt. It doesn't come with an age statement but what was ten years old back in the Celtic Nations days is now a rather mature 18 years. It's released at its cask strength of 44.1% in a limited edition of 1,200 bottles. It is neither chill-filtered nor coloured.

Photo courtesy of the Teeling Whiskey Company

Given the SWA's conniptions, it's unlikely we'll be seeing more Irish / Scottish hybrids but the "No. 1 Edition" on this bottling hints at future blends with the output of other nations. At an Irish Whiskey Society tasting last year we sampled a 1934 blend of Irish pot still and American whiskey. Perhaps it's time for another transatlantic pairing.

The Hybrid Malt will be available in Ireland from the Celtic Whiskey Shop and at Dublin Airport, recommended retail price €50. Consignments are being shipped to the UK and Benelux countries too.

Revealing Teeling

2012-10-06T00:32:00.001+01:00

A gang of hardened tipplers in Dublin was lucky enough recently to preview some coming attractions from The Teeling Whiskey Company. It was all in the name of market research but while they were watching us, we were watching them, and I think we started to get a feel for this brand new company's values and intentions.

Openness

It wouldn't have surprised me if this tasting had been strictly off the record. Some distillers keep their cards close to their chest and can be pretty cagey about what, precisely, is in the bottle. Jack Teeling, however, told me that nothing was off-limits. They are happy to do their thinking process in public.

Look forward, then, to a lot of direct engagement with whiskey consumers. This is a small company's strength: information is not chill-filtered by corporate HQ or watered down by the PR department. Whiskey drinking enthusiasts like to talk about whiskey with the enthusiasts who actually make it.

There is one caveat to this. TWC depends entirely, for now, on other companies for its stock, and these companies sometimes impose restrictions on what can be revealed. Quite reasonably, they like to keep control of their own marketing.

Innovation

TWC's whiskey wizard is Alex Chasko, formerly Innovation Manager at Cooley. I recall a masterclass at WhiskyLive last year where Alex treated us to a couple of experimental reformulations of Kilbeggan. Well, Kilbeggan didn't change, but Alex has gotten a second bite at the cherry in his new role. In the dying moments of Cooley's independence, TWC locked down a supply contract so it could create its own blends. (Incidentally, Jack says the hasty negotiations explain the name of his company - there was no time to think of anything different!)

Kilbeggan whiskey has always been a bit of a puzzle for me. Cooley makes fine malt and grain whiskeys but I've never been a huge fan of the flagship blend when served neat (it's a great mixing whiskey though). It's the youth of the components. They are shouty and unrefined. Blended Cooleys have appeared in many tweaked guises as supermarkets and others rushed to label their own 4-year old Irish whiskeys. But there is still a great blend waiting to be conjured out of Cooley-made components (Kilbeggan 18yo qualifies but it's too expensive for everyday drinking).

This time around, Alex poured us three candidate blends. Each had a high grain/malt ratio (80/20) but the malt was 8 years old, a very good age for Cooley malt. With just the usual bourbon cask ageing, this was still recognisably in the Kilbeggan family with that young nose and overwhelming pepperiness in the taste. A beautiful citrus finish though.

This is where the innovation comes in. For the second sample, Alex married the malt and grain in a rum cask, sourced from Nicaragua, for eight months. Nobody in the room picked up on the rum influence. Instead, it supplied a nose of "candy cigarettes", brought that spiciness under control and moderated the citrus finish in a very slightly bitter marmalade direction. It was delicious. I shouldn't say more after only a single tasting, but this has the potential to be my favourite Irish blend. I hope this is the one TWC decides to bottle.

The third candidate blend seemed more like a Hail Mary pass to me. It was based on the first, solely bourbon-matured blend but with a splash of far older malt from another distillery in it. I'll say more about that other malt later. The result was, in my opinion, a fairly dead nose, a weak mouthfeel and a flavour of herbal sweets. Noticeable vanilla on the finish. It didn't have any spark for me.

Whiskey-led

By "whiskey-led" I mean not marketing-led. There is no doubt that Jack knows what the market likes and is keeping one eye on it. But the whiskey comes first.

Consider that older malt I referred to above. There was a batch of malt offered to Cooley a few years ago by, um, let's say a distillery in the north of Ireland that had no outlet for past experimental distillations. Cooley declined but Jack Teeling snapped it up.

Among this consignment, for example, were 80 casks of double-distilled malt from 1991. We tried this whiskey fresh from the cask. It was perfectly acceptable, and could have been bottled as is and marketed as a rare Irish 21yo. As a whiskey, however, it lacked something on the finish.

A great whiskey must tick every box. If the finish is too dry or a sherry flavour dominates, say, then it's not a great, balanced whiskey. Every aspect has to sing, in harmony.

And so, even though these casks could have been bottled and flogged off without further ado, Alex transferred their contents to 60 sauternes casks. Alex is just shaping the profile of the spirit here, not trying to bury it under another flavour. He avoids using the term "finishing".

It's a brave move. There were gasps in the room when people heard where this unique 21yo malt went. But it was the whiskey itself that demanded it.

A separate batch of 24- and 25-year old malt has been decanted into white burgundy casks. We tasted this (pre-burgundy) and it was even better than the 1991. But Alex sees a little more potential in it. In particular, he says, these burgundy casks should add a good mouthfeel.

There might be some single cask releases too. They have stock dating from 1983 to 2001 to choose from. But I have a feeling that Alex won't let them out the door unless they are truly good enough to stand on their own merits. Otherwise they will be blended or transformed in some way.

Independent bottling

TWC is making a virtue out of necessity. They want to distil their own spirit and are working actively to make that happen. In the meantime, however, they need to sell whiskey.

There is a well-established practice in Scotland for independent bottlers to procure casks of whiskey from distilleries, then bottle and sell it. For various reasons that doesn't happen so much in Ireland. But it turns out that Irish distilleries have casks they don't know what to do with. That one in the North has obviously been a rich source for TWC, and Cooley had various experiments on the go before it was acquired by Beam so there is at least a chance of something from there down the road.

TWC also acquired a couple of casks of a blend of Irish and Scottish malts, orphans stranded long ago (but now bottled and ready for release). This has given them the idea of mixing Irish whiskey with the output of other nations. I'm quite sceptical about this concept, actually. Constraints stimulate creativity; this might be loosening the bounds too much. I don't think there's much market clamour for this either but I'm ready to be proved wrong.

Poitín

Poitín, in the sense of unmatured whiskey, is a well-known but almost non-existent (legal) drink in Ireland. Someday, someone is going to figure out how make it and market it back to us. Cooley released one in its independent days but it was raw and hard to digest (I thought), and nobody figured out a good way to drink it.

TWC is going to take a pop at the category. It will also be made by Cooley but it will be a blend of malt and grain spirits rather than the straight pot still that Cooley tried. That's smart because it adds a lot more processing to the grain, mitigating that rawness.

We sampled it and it's certainly milder and more palatable. I still don't think I'd drink it neat but I look forward to mixing it to see what happens.

And more...

We were all a bit concerned when Beam took over Cooley that some of the colour and excitement would drain from the Irish whiskey scene in the pursuit of volume growth. Happily, much of Cooley's adventurous spirit survived, jumping ship with Jack Teeling and Alex Chasko. The Teeling Whiskey Company isn't a year old but it has firmly nailed its colours to the mast. We have much to look forward to.

Bushmills Irish Honey now in Ireland

2012-09-21T00:49:00.000+01:00

I posted about Bushmills Irish Honey last March, when it was launched in the US. In late August it finally surfaced in Ireland, at least in Dublin airport, where I spotted it.

To be fair to Bushmills, I must declare that I don't like the taste of honey. I got a sample of it in the airport shop in a little cup, though, and didn't pick up so much on the honey. I was more struck by a hit of vanilla which might be one of the "other natural flavours" they coyly allude to on the label. Anyway, I thought it was safe enough to invest in a litre bottle (€28) for later exploration.

Pouring it into a big glass, I realised that they hadn't stinted on the honey after all. It's big on the nose and the palate, which I found hard going initially. I'm revisiting it tonight though, and I'm making better headway.

At 35%, and perhaps with a coating effect from the honey, there is no alcohol burn at all, just a gentle warming on the finish. I imagine this was a large part of the rationale for introducing the product, ie that it might snare the non-whiskey drinker.

The honey lingers far too long for me but I find that tossing an ice cube in adjusts the balance nicely. Now I get a different, less honey-like sweetness and it's a lot easier to pick out the pears that the official tasting notes describe. The finish is more HobNob than honey, which I don't mind at all.

I suspect Bushmills Irish Honey will be more often drunk mixed than neat so let's throw in some Coke Zero (all I have to hand) to finish. Oh, very drinkable. It tastes like one of those fancy colas "brewed from botanicals".

We might be seeing the start of a trend in flavoured Irish whiskeys here. Jameson recently launched it's own trial in Australia: Jameson Cloudy Apple and Jameson Raw Cola. I've always thought Irish whiskey mixes well so I'm sure there's a market for these experiments. Try them on whiskey sceptics you know. It might lure them a little closer to the dark side.