Too lazy to post this review of contemporary Irish whiskey yesterday, and yet wanted to capture the anecdote for my online-scrapbook-né blog né web-zine, hence here's an entry about Ireland that isn't posted on March 17th. The horror!
Wags always note Black History month is relegated to February, the 'shortest' month, but why is Irishness usually only trotted out March 17th (and occasionally on Bloomsday - June 16th)? There must be a conspiracy!
Communing With Irish Spirits - WSJ.com In November 1960, a few weeks after John F. Kennedy won the presidential election, celebrated Irish novelist and critic Frank O'Connor came to Washington and blasted the millions of Irish-Americans who “do absolutely nothing for Ireland.” Not only didn't they support foreign aid, but “they don't even drink Irish whiskey,” O'Connor lamented.
“Go to New York on St. Patrick's Day, and everybody is out having a glorious time of it,” O'Connor said. “The pubs are kept busy by Irishmen, and so they're all serving what kind of whiskey? Scotch.”The worst offender, in the novelist's book, was the president-elect -- an Irish-American whose father had made a killing with a franchise importing Scotch at the end of Prohibition. O'Connor urged Kennedy to give up Scotch and take up the spirit of Erin.
Parenthetical: I wonder how well Prescott Bush and Joe Kennedy Sr. knew each other?
But even in Ireland, Irish whiskey hasn't always been poured on March 17. It wasn't long after Ireland became a free state in 1922 that the country's Senate, the Seanad Éireann, determined that there should be no drinking at all on St. Patrick's Day.In November 1924, Irish legislators were debating the “Intoxicating Liquor Bill,” and an amendment was offered to close all pubs on the holiday. Sen. P.W. Kenny, a proponent, said: “In some circles it was looked upon as an insult to, and an absolute neglect of the Saint, if a person did not drown the shamrock in his honour.” Such ritual drinking, Kenny proclaimed, was “a direct insult to the Saint.”
Rising in opposition was Sen. Oliver St. John Gogarty, a surgeon and wit (now best remembered as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's “Ulysses”). Gogarty protested that when St. Patrick came to Ireland “there was no word in the Irish language to explain the condition of sobriety.” He bemoaned the “rigidly righteous, puritanical set of cranks” who had imposed Prohibition in America. “Temperance is an excellent thing,” Gogarty said, “but human liberty is more important.”
Gogarty would eventually lose the argument, and for decades Irish pubs were closed on St. Patrick's Day.
A bit ironic, no?
As for the suggested bottles of Irish whiskey to purchase, Eric Felten writes:
To get a picture of the new spectrum of spirits, I tried two different whiskeys from each of Ireland's three distilleries: Redbreast 12-year-old pot still malt and Midleton Very Rare blend from the Jameson folks; Michael Collins single malt and Connemara cask strength single malt from the Cooley Distillery; and Bushmills 10-year-old single malt and Knappogue Castle 1994 from the Old Bushmills Distillery.I can't say I disliked the Midleton, Jameson's super-premium blend, though it does drift perilously close to blandness. I can't see myself again spending anything like its $140 a bottle cost. Far more satisfying (and affordable) from the same distillery is Redbreast, a big, swaggering malt, thick and viscous, with just enough spice to cut through a sweetness that smacks of raspberries.
The Cooley distillery, founded in 1987, has been experimenting with whiskeys in the Scottish style, using barley malted over peat fires. The tradition in Ireland has been to bake the grain in closed ovens before mashing it and fermenting it, which is why Irish whiskeys have lacked the smokiness of their Scottish cousins. Irish distillers have also triple-distilled their whiskey as opposed to the double distillation of Scotch, which has generally made for a lighter-bodied spirit.
The most Scottish of Cooley's whiskeys is its Connemara brand, with the peat asserting its presence not so much in smokiness, but in the taste of hospital-grade iodine. Which isn't to say it is bad whiskey, especially when judiciously diluted with water. It's just not what one is looking for in an Irish malt. By contrast, the iodine is well under control in the Michael Collins single malt, which Cooley makes for Sidney Frank Importing Co. The Michael Collins has all the doughy sweetness one expects from an Irish whiskey with just enough of the medicinal astringency associated with peat to produce a wonderful balance.
And then there is the Knappogue Castle 1994 and the Bushmills 10-year-old, which offer a demonstration of just how much a whiskey can be affected by its time in dunnage. Castle Brands makes its Knappogue Castle vintage whiskeys entirely from 10-year-old barrels of single malt purchased from Bushmills, yet the stuff is remarkably distinct from the 10-year-old malt that the distillery itself bottles.
Bushmills puts some of its whiskey in used bourbon barrels, and some in old sherry casks; Castle chooses only to use the spirit aged in the bourbon oak, and even then selects barrels in which the whiskey is particularly light and delicate. The house style of Bushmills comes through in its 10-year-old expression: honey-rich and rounded. Knappogue Castle, by contrast, is bright and grassy with a tremendous amount of flavor for such a light-bodied spirit.
Irish whiskeys have come a long way in a short time. And a good thing, too, because as a character in O'Connor's story “The Eternal Triangle” says: “Bad whiskey is the ruination of the world.”
I've splurged, once, on the Bushmills 10-year old, and it was delicious. This photo of the cheaper (yet still tasty) Bushmills blend will suffice, too bad the bottle is empty.
