We've had a pretty amazing response to our whiskey content here at Behind the Bar,
and plenty of you calling for a video about Irish whiskey,
so grab your favorite bottle, pour yourself a dram and settle in.
What does make Irish whiskey different and crucially, did the Irish invent whiskey?
As with all good Celtic stories there's a bit going on here so this could take a while, however
if you don't really care about history and would rather just drink the stuff then don't worry. In
part two we will have a look at the styles and of course actually be tasting some of these, we also
have some Irish whiskey cocktails coming up soon so if either of those take your fancy then make
sure that you've subscribed and hit that little bell so that you get notified when they come out.
By some strange quirk of fate it seems that people named Tim really seem to like this channel. On
that note I'd like to thank our awesome Patreon supporters Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim,
Tim and to keep things fresh Jim. Thank you. If your name is Tim or Jim, or anything else really,
and you'd like to support us too, there is a link below. Otherwise, on with the show!
Distillation has an extremely interesting history, we'd need a very long separate
episode and probably a doctorate to do it justice, but suffice to say that while
fermentation- so making things like wine and beer- can happen by accident distillation
takes a little bit of scientific know-how. There are examples of it in Asia as far back
as 800 BC, but in the eighth century an Arabic alchemist named Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan
invented the alembic pot still and by extension spiritus alcohol.
So raise the glass to him next time you're having a dram.
Obviously this invention went through various uses and it took some time for it to spread,
and high-proof alcohol to actually be drunk recreationally, but what we are interested in
is its arrival on the British isles, where our beloved version, whiskey, took shape.
And as much as this may anger my fellow countrymen, many signs do point to Ireland.
As I've already said, distillation takes scientific know-how, and the people who
had that education in those days were monks. Irish monks were also pretty well traveled
and the story goes that they brought the art of distillation back home from continental Europe
as early as the 12th century. They quite quickly realized that there was a bit more
demand for a warming dram than for distilled perfumes in Ireland, but these spirits would
have been unaged and flavored with herbs so quite different from what we drink now.
They were known as Uisge Beatha which is Irish Gaelic for Aqua Vitae or water of life.
In fact the first written reference to it is in 1405 which was recording
the death of a head clansman who died after taking a surfeit of Aqua Vitae at Christmas
time- so let that be a lesson to us all.
The monks spread this over to Scotland and so actually Islay would have been one of the first
places because it lies in between Ireland and Scotland and it quickly took hold. The
first written reference in Scotland is in 1494 when Friar John Cor bought enough malt to make
about 1500 bottles of whiskey, so it's fair to say that it was pretty common practice by then.
Now of course both the Scottish and Irish have been known to spin
a good yarn and we'll probably be fighting over this forever more,
but what is certain is that King James the first granted a license to distill, which
is widely thought to be the first in the world, to the landowner in Bushmills, Ireland in 1608,
and here we see the birth of the whiskey distilling industry as we know it.
Now another blow to my country's ego,
Irish whiskey was really considered to be a far superior product for most of its history.
In fact one theory as to how the Irish whiskey got the 'e' was so it could be differentiated from
the less well-regarded Scottish product. It was consistent and mellow,
which are two things that its Scottish counterpart was certainly not at that point.
So what happened? Well the 1800s was not an easy time for the Emerald Isle,
with the total abstinence campaign, you had the great famine and mass immigration,
but it was really the 1900s which actually decimated the industry.
You had the first world war and all of its economic ramifications and then that
was followed closely by the Irish war of independence, which effectively locked them
out of the British Commonwealth market. So they lost Britain, Canada, Australia, India
amongst others and then prohibition hit in the States, which was their largest export market.
The Scottish could still ship to Canada, making running their whiskey into the States much easier
whereas the Irish were both reluctant and actually practically unable to ship their product over.
And somewhat ironically, their stellar reputation led to them being the number
one choice for bootleggers to just stick on the labels of their caramel colored methylated spirit
and so slowly the image of Irish whiskey disintegrated.
Meanwhile, the Scottish had enthusiastically embraced the
latest evolution in distilling science, which was the continuous column or coffey still.
Funnily enough actually the first man to come up with this idea was a Scotsman Robert Stein,
but it was then an Irishman Anaes Coffey who perfected it.
This definitely deserves its own videos it's actually one of the things which has
a massive impact on the flavor of a spirit and is actually quite often overlooked, but
basically column stills can produce a much larger volume of a much cleaner spirit than pot stills,
so the Irish whiskey industry was pretty loathe to use it as they felt it compromised the quality
of their whiskey because the flip side of a clean spirit is often a less flavorful one.
However the crafty Scots saw an answer to their image problem
and started blending this light and smooth spirit with their rougher single malts
to produce a spirit suitable for a wider audience known as blended whiskey. Many of
these brands such as Dewar's and Johnnie Walker and Bell's are still beloved worldwide today.
The luck of the Irish did seem to have run out
by the mid-1950s there were only five distilleries left in Ireland,
down from close to 100 in its heyday, so these five distilleries decided to join forces and they
formed the Irish distillers limited, which was bought out by Pernod Ricard in 1988.
They consolidated their distilling efforts to the point where Irish whiskey was actually only being
made out of two distilleries and Jameson really became the flagship brand that they rallied
around. We will get more into styles later so stay tuned, but basically Jameson's was a good horse
to back. It's light and easy going, which does lead to it being many bartender's shot of choice.
Well that in the fact that they throw a great party.
It also led though to people seeing Irish whiskey as quite one-dimensional, but
at least it was back in the consciousness again. Also in the 1980s a man named John Teeling took
over the Cooley distillery and with the monopoly broken the renaissance started in earnest.
Cooley actually specialized in contract distilling and so many brands of Irish
whiskey you saw popping up in the 1990s and 2000s were made there, much the same
way that a lot of bourbon brands come out of only a couple of distilleries in the States.
When Beam Suntory bought out Cooley though, they didn't have much interest in continuing
to do that. Unfortunately this did see some brands fall by the wayside,
but others decided it was time to build their own distilleries.
As with all things whiskey, the aging process means that these kinds of changes will take a
while to be felt, so a lot of Irish whiskey on the market now will still have been made at Cooley.
But with the distillery current back up to a healthy 18, including a Diageo one,
and with many more planned it is clear that Irish whiskey is set for world domination once more.
So now you know the history of Irish whiskey, please do join me next time when I'll be having
a look at styles and actually having a taste through some of these. Until then slainte.