In January, an Irish single malt was put up for sale by The Craft Irish Whiskey Co priced at €80,000 (excluding shipping and taxes) per bottle. Indeed, why should Irish whiskey have a single overriding character? Would you expect that of Scotch? ‘With over 40 Irish whiskey distilleries thriving and a broad product offering, defining a core flavour identity for Irish whiskey is increasingly difficult, and a concept we feel is slightly outdated,’ he says. Today, our approach is to be respectful to the past, but confident enough to forge our own future.’ Midleton’s O’Gorman agrees. ‘This shows the danger of being locked or trapped in tradition. ‘Irish whiskey was so undynamic and vanilla in its approach for such a long time as a result of lack of competition and a mistaken belief that there was only one way to make Irish whiskey,’ says Teeling. Such is the dynamism permeating Irish whiskey today that those hackneyed notions of a soft, inoffensive, easy-drinking spirit can now safely be put aside. ‘There is an Irish whiskey for everyone and every occasion, which is what makes it such an exciting category.’ ‘We’re proud to run the full flavour gamut and experiment with all sorts of finishes, from Port and Madeira to rum and wine,’ she adds. Whether old names or new, Irish whiskey makers today are linked by a drive to experiment and push the limits of flavour exploration – from the youthful releases of the latest startup to long-aged expressions such as those from Bushmills’ Causeway Collection, which head blender Alex Thomas says took more than 15 years to perfect. No limitsĪlex Thomas, The Old Bushmills Distillery. Today’s Jameson pot still, however, is no facsimile of an old recipe, but a modern amalgam of five cask types, including virgin Irish, European and American oak. Today, you’ll find it made all over Ireland, and history has come full-circle with the release of Jameson Single Pot Still ( see below) – the creation of which Midleton Master Distiller Kevin O’Gorman describes as ‘a great honour’. It finds its most eloquent expression in Redbreast – a great survivor of Irish whiskey’s boom-bust years – and in the coloured Spot family of single pot still releases. Pot still whiskey – single pot still if originating from one distillery – has an unmistakable character: a silky, sometimes positively oily texture along with a punchy, tangy basket of spiced fruits. Its roots lie in commercial pragmatism: in 1785, the British government introduced a tax on malted barley, so Irish distillers started using a proportion of unmalted barley in production, thus saving money – but, inadvertently at first, adding flavour. In the midst of Irish whiskey’s modern transformation, pot still offers a direct link to its past. Until 1968, Jameson – the ubiquitous best-seller that spearheaded the Irish revival – was not the easy-drinking, mixable blend to launch a million St Patrick’s Day knees-ups, but a single pot still expression of a very different nature. This collective wave of innovation transforms popular preconceptions of what Irish whiskey should taste like, but then those preconceptions are rooted in relatively recent history. There’s also a Heritage Hunter bottling (Alc 50%, £92.95-£100 widely available online) of a variety of barley that hadn’t been used in whisky production since the 1970s. Waterford Distillery makes organic whisky (the company eschews the ‘e’) biodynamic whisky, single farm origin expressions and two peated whiskies that claim to be the first in generations to use not only Irish barley, but Irish peat, too. The triple-distilled, core Dingle Single Malt expression – aged for six to seven years in first-fill, ex-PX Sherry and bourbon casks (Alc 46.3%, £50.99 Drink Finder, House of Malt, Master of Malt) – is a zesty, fruit-filled charmer of a whiskey, supplemented by small-batch expressions such as the Wheel of the Year series, the latest a superbly balanced rye cask finish called Lá Le Bríde ( see below).ĭrive from Dingle across to the east for about 150 miles and you’ll arrive at Waterford, where Mark Reynier – one of those who engineered the revival of Islay’s Bruichladdich – is leading Irish whiskey into a wine-inspired world of uber-provenance, with a laser focus on the raw materials of production. Located in a former sawmill, this is a thoroughly modern operation that makes gin and vodka, as well as whiskey. September releases 2022: full score table.Rhône 2021 score table: top white wines.March releases on the Place de Bordeaux 2023.
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