The Whiskey Trail, Taste the Spirit of Ireland
The new Roe & Co distillery is located close to where the old Thomas street distillery used to be, re-purposing the old Guinness Power House. I was one of the lucky few who got invited to the grand opening, which blew my mind. This new Irish distillery is very unique, stylish and atmospheric. WIth it’s name is etched in Irish Whiskey history.
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From Clonakilty’s Cask Series comes the Port Cask Finish which is a blend of a 10 year old triple distilled malt and an 8 year old grain. Gently cut and finished in port casks imported from the Douro Valley in a process which adds a sweetness with spicy notes and creates a beautiful rich colour.
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Clonakilty Single Batch Double Oak whiskey has been finished in double oak casks since its conception, but now the team have decided to highlight the fact! A premium product matured in ex-bourbon casks, it is finished in virgin American oak; and shaved, toasted and re-charred ex-red wine European oak casks (NEOC)*.
This makes it the world’s first Irish whiskey to be finished in a NEOC cask.
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This is a unique Irish spirit that was distilled in Dublin city, in the Teeling Distillery. It is a triple distilled blend of malted and unmalted barley. It is referred to as a spirit, new make, because it has not been aged in wood for three years. In Ireland it is legally required to be aged in wood for three years in order to be considered a whiskey.
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Before we get things started, there may be some of you out there who are unfamiliar with the concept of ‘peated’ whiskies. In essence, it just means smoked whiskey, just like you see in salmon and bacon – similar concept. In Ireland and Scotland, barley is traditionally the key ingredient in whiskey production. But barley has very low sugar content, and to produce alcohol, yeast has to eat sugar present in the grain. So how do we kickstart the barley into producing sugar? We trick it in to germinating, a process called ‘malting’. After roughly three days of this malting, the barley has produced the required amount of glucose. At this stage we need the barley to stop malting immediately and to do this we blast the malted barley with heat.
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Yellow Spot, along with its younger brother Green Spot, have the enviable title of the last original bonded whiskies of Ireland. What is bonded whiskey I hear you ask? Great question. If you find yourself walking around Dublin, Cork or any one of our great cities you may see “Bonder” or “Whiskey Bonder” written over the doors to some older pubs. These are relics of simpler times for whiskey producers when the bonded market reigned supreme. Distillers would produce whiskey but leave the task of aging and bottling to the whiskey bonders. Essentially, anyone who wanted to produce their own style of whiskey could.
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Teeling Irish Single Grain Whiskey is a good representation of a changing attitude toward what’s historically been called Irish Whiskey. A movement towards innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit of doing something different when it comes to the Irish Whiskey vertical. True Scottish Single Grain whisky has been around for a long time, so grain whiskey itself isn’t new, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that Irish Grain whiskeys started showing up on the market. Which really isn’t any sort of a surprise because the entire purpose of grain whiskey is to be mixed with single malt to make the blends Irish whiskey is famous for.
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