Irish Single Malts
Ireland is not as renowned as Scotland for its single malts.
This is due to the fact that historically few Irish distilleries specialised in this kind of whiskey.
However recently there has been a huge increase in both the quantity and quality of Irish malts...
-A Drop of The Irish - Bushmills Ten Year Old - Bushmills Sixteen Year Old - Clontarf Malt -
- Connemara - Hennessy - Knappogue Castle - Limerick Distillery -
Preston Millennium - Locke's Malt - Sainsbury's Malt - Tyrconnell -
Bushmills:
Bushmills distillery is now part of the Irish Distillers Group, which itself is now part of the drinks giant Pernot Ricard. It is not as the label claims "The World's Oldest Whiskey Distillery" established in 1608. This conceit was only adopted in the early 1980's, until then all bottles carried the date of 1784. The current buildings date from 1885 making Bushmills the oldest working distillery on the island of Ireland.
A licence to distill in County Antrim was granted to a Sir Thomas Phillipps in April 1608, however there is no connection between this distillery and Bushmills.
There are currently two main expressions, the ten year old and the recently introduced sixteen year old.
There's a lovely soft vibe off this Malt.
It's not too taxing, not too sweet, not too assertive and not too bland. It's also available just about everywhere... So what's the problem? Well there isn't one really. The nose is light but does open with a little water, but the real charm is in the round, rich slightly sherry taste.
A classic.
While the ten year old is the standard Irish malt found in most homes, it now has an older brother. The sixteen year old Malt, is sub-titled three woods because the whiskey is matured in bourbon, sherry and port wood. The effect is stunning and has resulted in the ultimate after dinner Irish.
Note: There is also a five year old Bushmills Malt made exclusively for the Italian market, a distillery reserve and a Millennium expression. These will be reviewed shortly.
Distilled by Cooley,
the only independent distillery in Ireland; Connemara is a rare
treat being Ireland's only peated malt whiskey. You can also get
it at cask strength...
40% ABV:
From the moment you pop the cork you know that you are on to a
winner here. Rich peat, but without the salt and iodine you get
from many Islay whiskies. Instead you get distant peat smoke
drifting on the wind and a gentle sweetness. This is truly epic
stuff.
Note: The UK off-licence chain Oddbins do a peaty in house Irish Malt called Slieve na gCloc (the mountain of stones). Since Cooley's water source is the afore mentioned Slieve na gCloc, you can guess what's in the bottle. Excellent value.
At cask strength you get all this and a whole lot more. It's like regular Connemara that has been to the gym for a couple of months. No home should be without this most amazing of Irish Malts which has just won a Gold Medal at the London Wine & Spirits Trade Fair 2000. This is a former Whiskey of the Month... Click here for a more in depth review.
The
name of one of Ireland's great distlling families lives again...
Locke's Single Malt is made on a limited basis by Cooley, however this is not a great whiskey.
Locke's Malt tastes like a poor vatting of Tyrconnell with a little Connemara tipped into it. Unbalanced and confused, avoid unless you like the rather snazzy jug or you collect limited editions.
There are still some boxed originals of the first 5,000 bottles of Locke's Malt on sale in Kilbeggan and over some internet sites.
This was meant to have been Cooley's big seller, however it hasn't panned out that way. Is it the label? Is it the marketing? Is it the whiskey? The company have kept faith though and The Tyrconnell is currently being re-launched in the US.
Hand on heart, I like Tyrconnell. From the wonderful pear drops nose to the moreish malty finsih. It's best drunk neat, or with a little water as it is too light to take a mixer.
However they could do away with the screwtop which is cheap and smacks of a blend. I know of no other branded Malt that doesn't come with a cork. You buy a malt, you'll want to hear that cork pop!
Note: Cooley bottle an own brand Malt for the UK supermarket giant Sainsbury's which I can't tell apart from Tyrconnell. It is top value for money and has just won a Gold Medal at the London Wine & Spirits Fair 2000 in London. Cooley also do a Malt called Shanagary, bottled for a French supermarket chain.
Another Cooley vatting pops up in Clontarf Malt, though it has been passed through a charcoal mellowing process that leaves the subtle whiskey drowned in a sea of vanilla. Yeuch!
There are other expressions and ages of Cooley's Malt on the market, however for the money you don't get a lot extra in your glass.
The Hennessy in Hennessy Brandy was a young Irishman who fled his country. Now Hennessy have launched an Irish Single Malt to commerate that fact. However you won't see this brand in Europe, the French courts have seen to that. You've got to travel to Japan where I sourced my current bottle. It's basically Tyrconnell that's spent a bit longer in the wood. The good news is that the malt ages well, the bad news is the price... Nearly £70.
No this is not distilled in Limerick, the name has been chosen by the Scottish firm Adelphi as their Irish label. 234 bottles of cask no. 2572 have been bottled as Slaney 1991 at 60.2% abv. Despite the fact that the whiskey has not been coloured or chill filtered, it is not superb. Nice nose, shame about the finish. Again at £45 it's a bit pricey. Likewise the Suir 1992 is an aged Connemara, that somehow lost all the sweetness and doubled in price. Most interesting though is the Shannon 1991, Ireland's first ever bottling of a grain whiskey.
What ever my reservations about the above bottlings, it is great to be able to purchase cask strength, non-chill filtered Irish. Let's hope we hear a lot more from Adelphi.
This is a "vintage" Irish Malt, in that the year of distillation is identified. There are three modern vintages 1990, 1991 & 1992. All three were distilled by Cooley and the casks were personally chosen by Irish-American entrepreneur Mark Andrews and whiskey writer Jim Murray. This would make the current 1992 bottling a seven year old with a price tag of £40.
Again this is fine whiskey but it does make me wonder why Cooley haven't issued a 10 year old Tyrconnell. Perhaps they haven't got the stock as they ceased distilling for a couple of years in the early 80's. This might also explain why the next Knappogue bottling due at the end of 2000 will be from the Bushmills stable.
This unpeated Malt is very vague about it's origins stating only that it's "a combination of single malt whiskies..." I don't get the tell tale Cooley nose, so it is probably from Bushmills, though it is lacking in the signature sweetness of the Antrim gold. However at only £25 for a bottling at 45% abv, it's pretty good value.
By now it should be clear that you cannot believe much of what you read on the back of a whiskey bottle. Dates are kidnapped (1608) and heritages are bought (Locke's), but even in the fastasy world of whiskey, the claims made about this stuff take some believing.
Currently there are 330 bottles of Preston's Millennium Malt on sale over the Internet, the contents of a barrel of Cooley peated malt. But "mid-way through the maturation period, one of the last full bottles of Preston's whiskey known to survive was added to the cask, infusing this unusual and very rare whiskey with a sense of place and history." Wow!!! Except of course it's all a crock of shit.
Messers Fleming, Murray and O'Neill claim a heritage stretching back to 1822. They acknowledge that a John Woolsey did indeed run a distillery in Drogheda at that time, however they fail to make clear that whiskey hasn't been made there since the middle of the 19th Century.
The Preston's were not distillers, they were bonders and bottlers who operated out of the silent distillery. They bottled Jameson, in the days before distillery bottlings. So that whiskey tipped into the cask of Connmara was nothing more exotic than an old bottle of Jameson distillate.
Given all that, it's hard to imagine how a bottle of modern peated Malt shares "the strong character of the original Preston's," when each bottle would now contain around half a tea-spoon of the stuff. Also the fact that this whiskey has been diluted at all, makes Preston's Millennium a blend, not a Single Malt.
For £78 you can buy yourself a little piece of history... of should that be a piece of some get rich quick scam.
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