It’s that time of year when we look at trends for 2019. Actually, that time of year was about two months ago, in a different year, but I was busy then, so it has taken until now to get this done. Predicting drinks trends is a risky business – do you play it safe by […]
Recent Posts
The Confluence
For more than two thousand years, Guangzhou has been a meeting place – of land and sea, trade and culture, old and new. Separated by mountainous topography from the rest of China, it evolved into a modern, liberal city with its own distinct cuisine and way of life. As the terminus of both the Pearl […]
A toast to 2018
It was another boom year for Irish whiskey – Blackwater and Powerscourt both came to life, Nephin are gearing up to build, and Bono and Paddy McKillen bought into a proposed distillery for Monasterevin. It is an exciting time, and a sure sign that Irish whiskey was accelerating was the appearance of our first celebrity […]
Death and empire
I hadn’t been in Powerscourt House & Gardens since I was a child. My memories of it are vague – rolling down the grassy hills with my sister, getting lost in the Japanese gardens, and being scared by the statues of gods and monsters. Walking through the house and back out onto that incredible garden, […]
Some pics I took at a Cork Whiskey Society tasting this time last year. If you’re looking for a festive gift for someone, membership of the CWS is great value – thanks to the hard work of their committee, you get to taste unicorn whiskeys on a monthly basis. Join here.
Start to Finnish
A curious thing about the passage of time is how it is slower in our minds than it is in reality. Looking forward to anything feels like forever, while looking back it all seems like yesterday. In 2014 I was stumbling into an obsession with whiskey when I came across an Irish name in a […]
The Accidental Careerist
I was in a taxi on my way to the TV3 studios. It was 5am on a cold November morning in 2014, and I was about to appear on the channel’s breakfast TV show, Ireland AM. The driver and I were laughing about the fact that I was about to go on live television to […]
The Science Of Faith
“Nobody knows anything about us,” John O’Connell says of West Cork Distillers, the firm he co-founded and has poured 17 years of his life into. It seems incongruous – at a time when Irish whiskey is booming, one of the most grassroots, ground-up operations in the country is also one of its least well-known. This […]
Future perfect
And on the seventh day, the Irish whiskey category did not rest: It’s time for a Sunday morning press release: Irish Distillers announces €150 million investment in sites in Cork and Dublin More than €150 million is to be invested into Irish Distillers’ Midleton Distillery, maturation site in Dungourney, Co. Cork, and bottling plant Fox […]
A challenger approaches
Writer’s Tears – great name, great look, great whiskey. And now, in a sure sign that Irish whiskey’s stock is rising, this excellent whiskey is now a sponsor of WhiskyCast. Here’s some press release: The premium Irish whiskey, Writers’ Tears – Copper Pot, has agreed a brand partnership deal with the renowned WhiskyCast podcast produced by legendary whiskey […]