Jameson breaks the 3m case barrier

Every year we get a good news story about the state of the market for Irish whiskey from Jameson's parent company, Pernod Ricard. Their annual reports have been boasting of an average annual growth in sales of almost 10%. That figure disguises the spectacular results achieved in some countries: 22% growth in volume in the US last year, for example.

I've plotted the volume sales of Jameson in this chart since 1988, the year Pernod acquired Irish Distillers. These are the figures I had available from the various annual reports.


The standard measure in the industry is the 9-litre case equivalent. Spirits are sold in several different bottle sizes but this measure imagines that all the produced volume has been shipped in cases of 9 litres total. That would be 12 bottles of 750ml each.

In 1988 Irish Distillers was selling 0.4m cases a year. The latest financial report for the year up to the end of June 2010 claims a bit over 2.9m cases. I was at the Midleton distillery recently and heard the welcome, though inevitable, news that the 3m barrier has finally been breached.

Myself and a few others were very kindly shown over the plant by David Quinn, Distillery Manager, and David Byrne, Export Development Manager. I doubt there was another place on this planet that I was more keen to explore but it's not usually open to visitors. You can imagine, then, that this was a particular treat for me. The guys were very open with the details of the remarkable operation down there in Cork so I learned a great deal, for which I am extremely grateful.

But back to the Jameson story. Three million cases a year is impressive but Midleton has to anticipate sales years down the road to allow for maturation time. That's why the plant runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are laying down enough Jameson to sell 6m cases a year. And they won't be stopping there. In four years or so, they expect to expand the plant to double the distillation capacity.

The numbers boggle the mind like an Irish bank bailout. They can distil 30m litres of pure alcohol in a year. This is filled into 100,000 casks. One warehouse can hold 35,000 casks and there are 36 warehouses on the site. Two or three warehouses are added every year (they have recently acquired some adjacent land so they can maintain this pace of expansion).

Jameson is the flagship of Irish whiskey around the world. Where it goes, other Irish whiskeys can follow in its draft. Clearly Jameson is going places fast, so this can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole.

Bog Oak

There was an international competition a couple of years ago for the Best Job in the World. The main selling point was getting to live on a tropical island. Well, at the most recent Irish Whiskey Society tasting we had the opportunity to meet Alex Chasko, Cooley's Innovation Manager since January 2010. Paid to experiment in a whiskey distillery? I think we can agree that knocks loitering beneath the palms into a cocked hat.

Alex's path to this dream position began with being born in Oregon, a state famed for its craft brewing (I'm taking that on trust since I don't know much about beer). It was no surprise then that he fell into the beer business, opening a micro-brewery in Singapore along the way. A degree in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland underpinned the practice with theory and now he's in Ireland (an Irish wife had a say in that part).

He brought along one of his experiments for us to try. He is quite taken with "bog oak", chunks of tree that have been preserved for hundreds or thousands of years in Ireland's bogs. We saw some samples of this now-black wood, having absorbed the essence of bog over the centuries. Alex took some of the Turf Mór whiskey and popped in some chunks of this oak for a period of 12 days. He figures this would have a similar effect to the whiskey being stored in a cask made of the same wood for six months.

It definitely influences the whiskey. I regret to say I had polished off my Turf Mór sample by this point so I can't really compare the two. The ultimate idea is to adapt a normal cask by, say, replacing an end or stave with this bog oak. Perhaps an entire cask is possible.

We feel very lucky as society members to get such insights into product development at the various distilleries. Cooley has been especially open with us. We look forward to more "thinking outside of the cask" from their official ideas man.

Connemara Turf Mór

UPDATED 05 Nov 2010: price info supplied was ex-distillery and not final retail price. Entry has been corrected.

Last week's Irish Whiskey Society tasting was dedicated to peat. Six of the eight bottles came from Islay, off Scotland. I'm still developing a taste for full-on peat but the selection chosen for the night by Michael Slevin and Luke Gough would persuade anyone of its merits. You can see the full list on the event page.

I want to focus here on a new whiskey from Cooley, an extension to its Connemara range in the Small Batch series. I've written about Connemara Turf Mór ("Big Turf") before, when we tried it straight from the cask during the Kilbeggan tasting. The context here was different though, up against some of the finest examples of peated spirit from across the water. How would it compare?

To recap the story of Turf Mór, a few years ago Cooley had trouble sourcing its usual amount of 20ppm peated malt from Scotland (malt made in Ireland is not peated). To keep the stills going, they bought a higher 58ppm malt and mixed it with the unpeated variety to moderate the intensity.

As an experiment, however, they distilled some of the highly-peated malt on its own and that is what has appeared today as Connemara Turf Mór.

This whiskey has a peppery bite that is the result of several factors. First, the high level of peating in the malted grain. Second, it's only just over 3 years old. That's the minimum legal age for whiskey but even basic whiskeys are given longer than that in oak to round off the raw taste of young spirit. Maturation will also tone down the effect of the peat smoke over time.

Third, this whiskey is being released at a cask strength of 58.2%, rather than the 46% I would have guessed.

It all sounds a bit much but somehow it isn't. You'll notice drinking it, no doubt, but there is a balance there that avoids the scorched, queasy feeling you can get after drinking some unrefined peat monsters.

Indeed, the Turf Mór tied for favourite of the night with Bowmore 25yo at 11 votes apiece. If you know the Bowmore, you'll know it's a spectacularly good sherried whiskey (a little too much sherry on the finish though). So the new Connemara is up there.

It gets better though. The Bowmore 25yo is a wallet-emptying €160. The Connemara Turf Mór, when it goes on sale in Ireland at the beginning of December, will cost far less. The ex-distillery price is in the low €20s so that will make it, in my estimation, one of the best value Irish whiskeys out there. I don't think it will linger on the shelves.