Did you know that the world's first aircraft disaster happened in Tullamore, in 1785? A scant two years after the Montgolfier brothers first demonstrated hot-air ballooning in Paris, a balloon crashed in Tullamore, setting the town's thatched roofing alight. The townsfolk rebuilt, and adopted the phoenix motif for their coat-of-arms.
William Grant & Sons have seized on the same metaphor to celebrate the return of distilling to Tullamore. As their new distillery rises from a field on the outskirts of town, they have launched a commemorative whiskey: Tullamore Dew Phoenix.
It is a triple-distilled, triple blend, which is what Tullamore calls its signature recipe of grain, malt and pot still whiskeys blended together. The pot still component has been finished for two years in Oloroso casks, giving Phoenix a rich, sherried taste.
It's bottled at 55%, non-chill filtered. There will be a total of 5,000 cases of Phoenix released, but in small batches, over time. It will appear in a limited number of markets, the first of which is Ireland, at The Irish Whiskey Collection in Dublin and Cork airports (the airport press release did not mention the world's first aircraft disaster). It will also be sold at The Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre.
It goes for €50 at the airport, no matter where you are travelling to. I haven't tried this whiskey yet but that seems a very reasonable price to me. Along with the recent Gathering whiskey, there is some great value to be had at the airport at the moment.
Here are some tasting notes from John Quinn, Global Brand Ambassador for Tullamore Dew:
Nose
A surprisingly smooth medium-bodied whiskey, with distinctive sherry notes and pleasantly spicy creamy pot still whiskey flavours, nicely balanced.
Taste
The higher strength tingles on the tongue leaving a spicy pot-still flavour. Addition of a little water releases layers of caramel sweetness, delicate floral notes and oak tannins. Altogether, a perfect balance of Oloroso sherry sweetness and spicy creamy pot still.
Yesterday's big news was the announcement of the Great Northern Distillery, to be owned by the newly formed Irish Whiskey Company (IWC). It's a fresh venture, but there are some old hands in the whiskey game involved, chief among them John Teeling, founder of Cooley Distillery.
Until US multinational Beam took over in 2012, Cooley was the go-to distillery for supermarkets, entrepreneurs and others wanting to sell their own brands of Irish whiskey without the fuss of making it themselves. Beam promptly exited that market to focus on making spirit for its own labels. According to John Teeling, Cooley had cultivated 80 to 90 private and retail label customers so the supply shut-off meant there was suddenly plenty of unmet demand for large quantities of Irish whiskey.
Diageo is moving lager production from its "Great Northern Brewery" in Dundalk to Dublin so they are happy to sell the facility to the Irish Whiskey Company. Dundalk is happy that a long tradition of brewing and distilling there will be maintained, once the Great Northern Brewery sign is touched up to read Great Northern Distillery instead.
The plans, which may yet change, are to produce grain spirit and unpeated, triple-distilled malt and pot still spirit. That provides a lot of flexibility for meeting the requirements of private and retail labels. The company also sees a market for its grain whiskey in the new craft distilleries popping up around Ireland. They typically install a pot or two but don't operate a continuous still and so can't make the lighter grain spirit. If they buy that component in from IWC, they can bottle less expensive, blended whiskeys.
What the business strategy doesn't include at this point are house brands, or low volume, single cask-scale bottlings.
The new distillery will be second only in size to Midleton on this island. Operating at full capacity, it could pump out 8m litres of grain alcohol and over 3m litres of pot still spirit.
What does this mean for Irish whiskey?
Well, it's certainly true that by the time Cooley was acquired there was a plethora of forgettable 4-year old Irish whiskeys with generic Irish-sounding names, particularly in the US. We'll no doubt see those again.
On the other hand, Cooley's willingness to supply whiskey gave rise to many interesting experiments. There was a kosher whiskey, a Petite Sirah-finished blend from a Californian winery and a supermarket single malt that Jim Murray declared Irish Whiskey of the Year in 2011. It also gave a kickstart to some of our new independent distilleries, like Slane Castle and Echlinville, who got their feet wet by building a brand not a production facility.
IWC will take possession of the site in early 2014. It will be able to adapt some of the existing brewing equipment and should have new distilling kit installed and running during the third quarter of 2014.
As more poitínbrands dip a toe into the market, the Glendalough guys have gone all-in by expanding their single bottling into a whole family. The two new spirits share the original's recipe of malted barley and sugar beet, launched last December. They are also matured in the same way, for up to six months with virgin Irish oak.
The original bottling appeared at an accessible 40% ABV. The first new variation steps that up considerably.
Glendalough Mountain Strength Poitín
Those mountain folk don't hold with watering down the hooch, it would seem, because "mountain strength" is 60% ABV. As Glendalough's Dónal Ó Gallachóir pointed out to me, traditional poitín is double distilled in pots, a process that would naturally top out somewhere in the 60s.
Dónal kindly poured me a sample as we talked. Since it wasn't under lab conditions I won't attempt tasting notes but the higher alcohol has intensified the complex notes of the original, without blowing them away. It has a really long and pleasing finish.
Glendalough Sherry Cask Finish Poitín
This one is back down to 40%, but it adds an extra six months' "finishing" in a sherry cask. Not a full-sized sherry butt, but a cut down version, with extra internal staves. This greatly increases the surface area of wood that the spirit is exposed to.
One obvious effect of this is a very healthy colour which, I am told, is entirely due to the cask. No caramel has been added.
The other effect is on taste. The wood influence has really narrowed the flavour gap with whiskey. Again, I just had a brief taste, but my impression was of a drink that would be perfectly palatable neat, or on ice.
The future for poitín
Clearly poitín can go places that Irish whiskey cannot. It doesn't have to be entirely grain-based, so unusual ingredients like sugar beet - a very important Irish crop in times past - can get a look in. It doesn't have to hang around in a warehouse for any specific length of time (whiskey requires ageing for at least 3 years). It can be matured in a wooden cask, or with wooden chips, or it can be bottled straight from the still. It's an interesting space for companies like Glendalough to explore.
It's a tough marketing task though, to build a category as well as a brand. Poitín has been successfully demonised by both Church and State so its image, now that it is once more legal to make, needs some rehabilitation.
Then we need to learn how to drink it. We seem to be developing a cocktail scene in Dublin, which comes just at the right time for poitín. To speed things along, Glendalough is sponsoring a poitín cocktail contest for Ireland's professional mixologists.
Availability
Glendalough is already on pour in a score of bars and restaurants around Dublin and is stocked in the well-known indy off-licences. The original edition goes for €30-€35, the Sherry Finish is €33-€37, and the Mountain Strength is €39-€44.
Do you know what The Gathering is? It's ten thousand different enticements to come to Ireland during 2013. It's hard to describe but, by way of example, here we all were two weeks ago, riverdancing along Dublin's quays:
Well, maybe not all of us. That weekend I was at another gathering, just behind the dancers on the bridge, in the Convention Centre. That was the Alltech Gathering, an International Craft Bewing and Distilling Convention.
Ads in the UK and the US, and on Facebook and elsewhere are inviting everyone to come to Ireland and meet others with similar interests or similar surnames or similar hair colour or whatever. Just come!
On your way home again, you might want to bring something of The Gathering back with you. Chances are, you will be passing through an airport with an outstanding selection of Irish whiskeys. To commemorate 2013 and its special theme, The Loop (at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports) has teamed up with the Teeling Whiskey Company (TWC) to create a unique souvenir.
It's an 11-year old single malt whiskey, called The Gathering. It's a vatting of several casks, all ex-American bourbon, apparently. Two casks are from 2001 (that's where the 11 years comes from), another is a hogshead of 21yo crystal malt (Bushmills used crystal malt in its 1608 anniversary edition a few years ago) and, finally, there is "a dash" from another 21yo cask just to tie it all together.
There is no indication where the malt was distilled but the "single" in "single malt" means it all came from the one distillery.
It's bottled at 46% so it's not chill-filtered. It has a very healthy colour that is all natural. There are only 1,000 (very attractive) bottles in this release, hand-signed by Teeling's master blender, Alex Chasko, and packaged in a substantial presentation box.
It sounds expensive but, remarkably, it isn't, going for just €69.95. At that price, it makes a great gift, and it should sell quickly on that basis alone. But how does it taste?
The Loop very kindly gave me a whole bottle to explore at leisure (a rare event but a welcome one, because it gives me a chance to really get to know a whiskey. Full disclosure: I was also treated to lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant for the press launch, which has never happened to me before!).
Teeling aimed here to showcase what Irish whiskey can be by starting with the typical smooth, sweet Irish profile, then adding layers of complexity. When I take a nose of it I'm reminded of stepping on board a tall ship, with that mix of hemp, tar, wood and varnish, but it's not overwhelming and it doesn't swamp a note of fresh apple.
The taste is that of a very spicy Christmas cake followed by a long, lingering finish of peach yoghurt with echoes of creaminess, fresh fruit and a hint of sour.
There is nothing I would want to change about this whiskey. I'm really enjoying it. We are promised further collaborations between TWC and The Irish Whiskey Collection at the airport but this first one is already a winner, and a steal at €70.
