Welcome back to Behind the Bar with me Cara Devine.
In this episode we're going to take a look at what makes an Irish whiskey,
well, an Irish whiskey, which sadly means I'm going to have to crack open a couple
of these bottles and try them out. But it's a sacrifice I am prepared to make for you.
As we've discussed in our look at the history of Irish whiskey, this noble spirit has suffered
from a bit of an identity crisis for most of the past 100 years. I've had many interactions such as
someone asking me for a Scotch and ginger ale and then when I ask them which Scotch they're after
they'll respond very confidently Jameson's. I've also been assured on various different
occasions that Irish whiskey is all unpeated, triple distilled, or must be made with unmalted
barley, and so on. All of which are true for some, but not all Irish whiskeys,
so let's get to the facts and the tax. Please don't stop watching, I promise we'll
drink some whiskey soon and we can forget all about taxes. Irish whiskey has a very similar
legal definition to Scottish whiskey so it must be distilled and matured on Ireland from a mash
of either entirely malted cereal, or malted cereal and other whole grains and aged for
at least three years. So much, so obvious, but maybe the easiest way to look at the range of
styles available is to debunk some myths. Before we go any further thanks to our
supporters Ralph, Stephen, Sarah, John, Anurag, Jozefine, Chris, Bernd, Clarice and Wilson.
They've all signed up to our Patreon if you'd like to join them there is a link below.
No, Irish whiskey can be both single malt, so 100% malted barley from one distillery or blended,
a mix of malted barley and grain spirit. Both of these are seen in Scotland too but there's also
a third, entirely Irish way and that's a single pot still whiskey. This is where the tax comes in.
Irish whiskey was big business, and the British government were certainly going
to profit from that, so heavy taxes were imposed, including one on malted barley.
Not ones to be taken advantage of, Irish distillers saw a loophole
and began using both malted and unmalted or "green barley". Luckily this actually tasted delicious,
it also, as the name suggests, has to be distilled in a pot still rather than a column still,
so this gives like a heavier kind of more chewy spirit this is the one truly unique Irish style
defined by law. But not all Irish whiskey is made like this and it actually fell out of fashion for
a while, but some brands such as Red Breast, and also the Spots, so Green Spot, Yellow Spot etc
kept it going and some of the newer distilleries are revisiting this traditional style which
is definitely a fun one to try and find, because it's got a really unique flavor.
This makes me happy.
So it's really interesting because of that green barley you do get
kind of obviously enough some quite green flavors, so it's really quite apple and pear on the nose,
um and then it's got like a lovely little spice on the palette but it is more savoury,
um that is balanced out in Red Breast because it is finished partially in sherry barrels,
so you get this kind of lovely lingering lingering sweetness
um but yeah definitely a little bit kind of like spicier and and more savory than you might expect
again an Irish whiskey to be but it is still nice and fresh and easy going.
It's definitely not as kind of like big and funky as you know a lot of Scottish single malts
so it's a really lovely kind of in-between style plenty of character um but but still super smooth.
Quite juicy actually, absolutely one of my favorite um Irish whiskies,
if you can get your hands on it then do yourself a favor because it's delicious.
Uh, the next one we're gonna have a little look at is Teelings, so this is actually a
single grain whiskey. So you may remember this name from our history section John Teeling is the
man who really kick-started the resurgence of a lot of old whiskey brands as well as
plenty of new ones from the Cooley distillery and his sons are continuing on the family tradition,
so they were first bottling Cooley stock but they've now opened a distillery and are laying
down their own whiskey. They like to say that they marry tradition and ingenuity so while
they have a single pot still, single malt and blended, they also have this single grain, and
no if you've been paying attention that doesn't mean that it's only made from one grain but it's
made at one distillery from 100% grain, so in this case uh 95% corn and 5% malted barley and
it's distilled on a continuous still which gives it a bit more of a kind of light and bright body.
So this is essentially the kind of whiskey which would be blended with with single malt and that
makes a blended whiskey, but just obviously bottling it by itself is pretty interesting,
especially when it's such a good example of it. I mean probably going to overuse the word smooth in
the course of this episode, but it is really kind of smooth um a little bit of like that kind of
malty, very small amount of malty character, but yeah that lovely kind of corn sweetness
and actually a really good nice long finish. It's definitely interesting enough to drink
by itself but also mixes really well and it's not super expensive, so one to look out for.
Not necessarily. It is true that most commercial whiskeys through the boom of Irish whiskey were
unpeated and this probably contributed to its mass appeal- because obviously peat can be a
bit divisive- but rural Ireland actually has as many peat bogs as Scotland does,
(I would imagine), so it would definitely have been used in smaller scale and illegal
distilleries historically. Connemara has been the only one for a while now but with the rise
in craft distilling there's definitely a lot of peated whiskey being laid down,
so expect a boom in the coming years and I for one am excited.
So Connemara is also a single malt, or rather is a single malt we haven't actually looked at a single
malt yet, and it's double distilled so there is going to be more on that later but it does mean
that it comes across on the nose like yeah it's got a really kind of quite nice big presence.
There's still heaps of fruit, you can definitely smell the peat like there
is that little hint of smoke but it's not um it doesn't smack you in the face in any way.
It's lovely because it's really soft, yeah still quite kind of a ripe fruit kind of entry,
and then the peat does come through and so you get this nice like almost slightly kind of salty
little tang at the end that basically just makes you want to go back for more. I do often recommend
this if people are kind of just dipping their toes into the world of peated whiskey
because it's quite soft you know compared to your bigger kind of Islays and things
but it's definitely there so it's quite a good one to sort of if you're just training yourself
to be able to pick out that flavor, without it being yeah in any way harsh or scary.
Also a really excellent drop.
Good question, and this is certainly a useful distinction in understanding why a lot of Irish
whiskeys taste the way they do but it's not a legal requirement and there have actually always
been Irish whiskeys which are not triple distilled, like Connemara for instance.
Essentially every time you distill you're concentrating the alcohol but also removing
heavier more water-soluble compounds, so only the lighter more fruity flavors make it through
each round of distillation and this is why vodkas will often boast about how many times they've been
distilled because it's obviously seen as desirable for vodkas to be clean and bright and fresh.
It is usually done on a column still so a little bit different again but it does help to illustrate
the point that triple distilled whiskey can be expected to be lighter brighter and more elegant
maybe than double distilled. Ireland isn't the only country to have triple distilled whiskey
though, you've got places like Auchentoshan in Scotland or Woodford Reserve in the States,
they're both triple distilled but a lot of the household Irish names are triple distilled and
known for their smoothness. So this can be true either of blends such as Jameson's or any of these
three actually, but also for instance Bushmill's do a single malt which is also triple distilled.
Now Jameson is a blend of both triple distilled pot still whiskey, and I hope
you've been paying attention and remember what that is otherwise you'll have to hit rewind,
and triple distilled grain whiskey. So it's been around continuously since 1780
and is the biggest selling Irish whiskey in the world so it's understandable that for many
this is the quintessential taste of Irish whiskey. It is matured in both bourbon and sherry casks and
it all just kind of amounts to a really mellow easy going, slightly sweet drop, easy to see
why it's so many bartenders shot of choice as it goes down a little bit too easily and it's also
really good if you do prefer to drink your whiskey with a mixer because it's not going to clash with
anything. It's basically just really likable, like pretty much every Irish person I know.
So again just pretty soft and fruity nose, like especially obviously going from the
Connemara back to this it's not really jumping out the glass at me particularly.
Tastes like Jameson.
Really nice malt character, definitely has, you know that kind of lovely like
biscuity sort of short bready vibe, also kind of into your warmer citrus fruits
so sort of your oranges like again quite a quite a juicy and sort of easygoing dram.
You know, I think it's one of those things people quite often like to disparage larger kind of more
commercially produced whiskies and things but there's also a reason that they're popular,
nobody's not going to like that if you stick that down in front of them,
you almost don't really have to think about it drinking it
and sometimes you just don't want to have to think about it and that's fine.
So now we've dispelled some myths what's next for Irish whiskey?
It's actually a really exciting time because obviously the industry was basically obliterated
and then dominated by only a couple of well-known brands so there's a real jostle for sort of
innovative distillers to establish themselves in this newly lucrative market. So you have
lots of people using peat or double distilling using different grains and different barrels.
Basically in ten years time they will probably be as wide a flavor spectrum of Irish whiskey
as there is of Scottish in fact if not more and I'm definitely looking forward to it. But we do
already have some fun stuff arriving on the market so something like the Kinahans Kasc project.
Kinahans was one of those distilleries that disappeared in the dark days of Irish whiskey but
it has been rebooted and while it's also releasing more classic single malts they're doing kind of
experimental things like this blend which has been aged in five different types of wood. So you've
got your standard American and French oak but also Hungarian, Portuguese oak and chestnut wood.
Definitely has a nice bit of weight to it, especially for, for what is a blended whisky,
which I'm assuming yeah it kind of comes from that nice
cask influence there. A little bit of tannin which is interesting kind of seeing the the oak in it,
which gives it a nice bit of structure but still kind of super smooth and approachable.
If you do like you're kind of easier going dram, something like a you know Jameson,
Tullamore Dew, that sort of thing then this could this would definitely be like a bit of a
level up in terms of sort of depth of flavor and intensity of flavor without getting into anything
too full-on, yep really really yummy.
So obviously that's Kinahans kind of playing around with the barrel finishing on it,
you also see other people playing with the actual sort of mash bill, so someone like Kilbeggan has
what they call the Kilbeggan Rye. It's not 100% rye but it does have quite a high proportion of
rye in there. Obviously we tend to think of that as being more the preserve of America,
although we are also making some cracking ryes in Australia too now, but it's just fun to be
playing around obviously that's going to have a bit of that sort of rye spice and dryness to it
which is again a bit of a departure from your more classic you know Irish whiskey,
soft and malty-floral kind of vibes and so it's just a really fun time to
be to be drinking Irish whiskey and only going to get more interesting I think.
So also you've got things like Poitin, if I'm saying that correctly, it's can't be called
whiskey because it's not being aged for three years. It's essentially the Irish version of
like a White Dog unaged spirit. Obviously with all of the kind of new distilleries coming through,
whiskey does just take a while, a lot of distilleries start making gin in the interim
to sort of tide them over until their whiskey's ready to drink, but this is something else that
you can do, is just bottle your new make and this one is really yum as well, like quite kind of
weighty on the palette. Definitely put a little bit of a dent in that one through lockdown, and
really cool to use in cocktails as well for sort of that malty character without- or I guess yeah
like cereal forward sort of character, without all the other layers of flavor the aging adds in.
Basically it's really a category to watch and it's great to see the folks who gave
us whiskey in the first place being properly recognized again. Do you have an old favorite
or a newcomer to watch out for? Definitely let me know in the comments and make sure to hit the
notification bell because now I've got to sit about chatting and drinking whiskey for a while
I should probably earn my keep and show you how to make some drinks with the stuff.
Irish whiskey, so now you know. Slainte