When asked what piece of advice he might pass onto the next generation of Irish entrepreneurs, John Teeling, founder of Ireland’s Cooley and Teeling distilleries, once said: ‘When you get ten rejections, get another ten.’
He may have been referring to the world of business in general, but Teeling’s words serve as fair strap-line for the sheer tenacity of Irish whisky itself. It’s riding high now, but in 1987, when he set up Cooley, whisky making in Ireland had reached such a low as to be represented by a grand total of just two distilleries: Bushmills in Northern Ireland and Midleton in County Cork. Rejection’s not the word. This was Irish whisky almost dead. Or so it seemed.
At any rate, contrary to what is generally thought of as being Irish whisky – that is, triple distilled, a predominant style, and a range of blends – is actually only a part of a much bigger picture. Ireland is home to three of the four whisky styles, as much to single malt and grain whiskies as it is Irish pot still, to most types of still and methods of distillation, and so to a variety of whisky that, while unable to match Scotland for number, offers real choice. It’s small, but it’s a veritable pantheon.
In a world obsessed with firsts, the debate as to who in the British Isles first distilled beer – the Irish, the Scots, perhaps, even, an Anglo-Saxon – masks the extent of Ireland’s contribution to fine whisky making. What matters is not so much the order in which everyone got out of those early blocks, but rather how things developed once up and running.
In this respect, Irish whisky by the late 1500s was already recognised as something special. Usquebaugh, a redistilled and flavoured new make, was consumed, as Dave Broom notes, alongside ‘uisege breathahd’ (aqua vitae or straight new make), and seems to have earned special recognition as an Irish ‘usque’, a style of whisky like no other. ‘A sovereign liquid’, said Raphael Holinshed, author of The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577), relatively tasty and capable of the extraordinary, ‘it slows age, it strengthens youth, it helps digestion, it cuts phlegm, it abandons melancholy, it relieves the heart, it lightens the mind, it quickens the spirit’.
Usquebaugh: a godly pick-me-up. By 1755 it had so cemented its reputation for consistency of quality as to move Samuel Johnson to describe it as being not only ‘particularly distinguished by its pleasant and mild flavour’, but also as palpably different from the ‘Highland sort’ (Scottish), which was ‘somewhat hotter’. Irish whisky was whisky.
Whatever Johnson was drinking in the mid-1700s, things had changed up a number of gears by the turn of the nineteenth century. Having survived a raft of relatively punitive taxes, with many a distillery opting to go dark, Irish whisky was well placed to make the most of a relaxing of regulations when they came (1823), especially in terms of developing consistency of flavour.
The early 1800s witnessed the birth of a method of double distillation that saw the low wines divided into weak and strong, redistilled separately, the feints from both reserved for the next batch of weak low wines, the rest distilled as spirits, the result a stronger and cleaner final distillate. A halfway house, it’s a method that served as bridge between double and triple distillation, largely giving way to the latter in the late 1800s, which in combination with a later trend for very large pots served to reinforce Irish whisky’s standing for a consistently refined and elegant whisky.
In addition, as is so often the way, necessity provided creativity further impetus, the nineteenth century malt tax resulting in increasing numbers of distillers adding portions of unmalted barley to the mash, the outcome a slightly more acidic, oily, peppery fruity taste to the new make, and with it, the birth of a new style: Irish pot still whisky.
Cashing in on its reputation, Irish whisky began for the first time to properly exploit Ireland’s position in the union, and as a result grew exponentially, with Dublin housing a clutch – Jameson (John), Roe, Power and Jameson (William) – of the world’s largest distilleries, and Belfast and Cork contributing their fair share in terms of volume. Triple distilled, pot still, peated or unpeated, it’s the 1860s and Irish whisky’s the toast of the whisky-drinking world.
FROM KING TO COFFEE
Nothing lasts, of course – and especially not empires. When it came, Irish whisky’s fall from grace was swift, the result, as Broom says, of ‘the cruellest run of bad luck, bad management and government interference’.
Briefly, the Dublin quartet’s refusal to accept blended – ‘silent’ or ‘sham’ – whisky had long sown the seeds of Irish whisky’s downfall. It’s wrong, as often assumed, to suppose that the Irish whisky industry as a whole was against the use of column or continuous stills, which produced grain whiskies largely for the purpose of blends. There were Coffey stills in Belfast. There was a Coffey still at Midleton. Ireland was not just about the pot. No doubt the Dubliners believed wholly in their ‘real whisky’, but there was in their seemingly backward-looking fight an element of economic sense: the column was a threat to what until then had been the largest whisky production unit in the world. Not only was there going to be a new type of whisky, but the continuous still served notice on the age of the giant pot still.
Truth be known, the Dublin faction was too strong for its own good, and way behind the times. The increasing success of nineteenth century Scottish blenders was a direct reflection of a sea-change in the whisky drinking world’s taste buds. Having backed themselves into a very conservative corner, things went from bad to worse – for the traditionalists and for Irish as a whole. Blended whisky was recognised in law (1909). The First World War happened. The Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and Prohibition (1920–1933) deadheaded Ireland’s main whisky markets. Distilleries were sold off, one after the other. Another world war later and Irish whisky was on its knees. The Scots had cleaned up, exercising a ruthless buy-to-kill policy, shutting down whatever they bought. The world wanted blends, and it was going to be scotch. A new king was born.
And the Irish were left out for the crows. In 1966 there were only four Irish distilleries in production, their annual output a smidgen against the 108 million odd litres produced at the turn of the century. An urban myth has it that but for the invention of a whisky coffee in Foynes, Western Ireland, popularised by the Buena Vista Hotel in San Francisco, it might have died out entirely. True or not, the industry was forced to rationalise, and ruthlessly. All but Bushmills was brought under a single roof, at Midleton, in Cork, the remaining traces of an empire now in the hands of Irish Distillers Ltd (IDL), a monopoly dedicated to keeping a score of brands alive.
—The Irish Whisky Act of 1980 defines Irish whisky as being made from a mash of cereal(s), fermented and then distilled at or at less than 94.8% abv, after which it must be aged for a minimum of three years in wooden casks.
—While Irish labelling employs similar terminology to Scotch whisky, the law doesn’t go as far as to statutorily define what’s meant, for example, by ‘single pot still’ or ‘single malt’ whisky. As in Scotland, ‘single’ denotes a whisky as coming from a single distillery. ‘Pot still’, meanwhile, refers to whisky made from a mash containing both unmalted and malted barley. Malt we know.
—Traditionally, Irish pot still whisky is triple distilled, though there’s no law to say it should be. Not all Irish whisky is triple distilled.
—If made from a blend of two distillates, then an Irish whisky must be labelled as ‘blended’. A blended Irish whisky will come from either trade between two or more distilleries or from two or more different distillates – grain, malt or pot still – made at the same distillery. Usually, the ‘blend’ is a portion of grain and pot still or malt whiskies.
—To be considered ‘Irish’, a whisky needs to have been distilled and aged in the ‘State or in Northern Ireland’.
FROM ASHES
In light of the speed and depth of its fall, Irish whisky’s recovery is often described as something of a miracle. And indeed, in many ways, it is. Hitching a ride on the back of the general whisky recovery, and in particular the re-emergence of a taste for single malt and bourbon, the category has gone ballistic.
However, as with most miracles, someone clever’s had a hand in the wonder. IDL planned ahead. It initiated the world’s first wood policy. It pulled down the Midleton distillery in 1975, and built a new and much more adaptable one. It held its nerve, so much so that by the time Teeling entered the fray, the results of its changes were already out, and beginning to attract critical acclaim. Irish was on its way back.
It wasn’t an easy ride, though. Cooley nearly went down, saved in the end by an advance from Heaven Hill, who agreed to buy up stock early. The old foe, scotch, was riding strong, and so too, more recently, bourbon. Plus, as an industry, it’s nothing like the size it was. It’s narrow, with stock largely concentrated in the hands of just three distilleries. Even so, the emphasis on quality, on points of Irish difference, paid off – handsomely. Irish whisky’s potential was enough to attract deep pockets. IDL sold up: Midleton went to Pernod Ricard; Bushmills went to Diageo and is now Jose Cuervo. Teeling eventually sold to Beam – now Beam Suntory.
Giants aside, the distillery count’s been ticking up – Teeling (now Jack, son of John), West Cork, the Echlinville, Tullamore, Kilbeggan, the Alltech Craft Distillery and Dingle. Old brands revived, new ones invented. Pot stills, columns, peated malts, different types of distillations, blends, grains – you name it, it’s happening in Ireland.
Written off by the competition, defying all doomsayers, Irish whisky just would not, to reappropriate Teeling, lie down. On the contrary: it’s a rocket, and provided the taxman lays off – and the market stays true, and the obsession with pushing Jamesons isn’t at the expense of all else – then the moon’s as Irish as it gets.