Kerry is Ireland at cask strength. As a Cork man, it pains me greatly to say anything nice about our neighbours to the west, but The Kingdom is a place of raw and startling beauty. Obviously there is a danger here of over-romanticising it, engaging in some noble savage mythos with proto-fascist symbolism of pure mountain air and fresh faced natives, as though anywhere with a population of more than ten thousand is a place of corruption and filth. So Kerry is beautiful, and in its rugged persuasions, it is not unlike Scotland. Which might make moving from one to the other a smooth transition, if not an immediately logical one.
Michael Walsh has a bright future ahead of him. After taking a job in the new distillery in Dingle back in 2012, at a time and in a place where there was little employment, he learned the craft on the job, and became head distiller. But we are now in the middle of the boom, and the time was right to move on – and so he did, becoming head distiller at Boann in Drogheda as they get set to make whiskey. This obviously left an opening in Dingle, a distillery that has mature whiskey (mature in comparison to those who came after, if not in comparison to those who came before), a great reputation and the special aura that comes from its remarkable location and the fact it is the first point in Irish whiskey’s most recent timeline. But master distillers can be hard to come by – few claiming the title in Ireland would have more than five or six years experience, unless they work for one of the big guns. So the latest announcement from Dingle about who they have appointed is even more startling.
Glen Moray Distillery is in Eglin, in the heart of the Speyside region of Scotland. It’s a great little distillery with great output – solid, bang-for-your-buck whiskeys with a side order of experimentation. Their master distiller, Graham Coull is one of the more engaging voices in whisky Twitter, shooting straight about the workings of a distillery and speaking his mind plainly. The son of science teachers, he undertook a chemistry degree in Edinburgh University before working with Wm Grant in Kininvie, Balvenie and Glenfiddich as distillation manager, before going on to become master distiller in Glen Moray. His no-bullshit approach means that he should really fit in in his new role as master distiller of Dingle Distillery.
And now for some personal thoughts – my inital one being, ‘fucking hell’. Coull has been with Glen Moray for 15 years, and is not just leaving his distillery, and his homeland, but a solid job in a big company (Glen Moray is part of La Martiniquaise, which is owned by French drinks billionaire Jean-Pierre Cayard, who does not like publicity).
There is an excellent profile of Coull on Scotchwisky.com, where he offers this telling quote:
I like age statements, but I’m not precious about them. You can get a six-year-old in a first-fill cask which is better than a much older expression in a refill cask.
Dingle is in a NAS holding pattern right now, but soon it will be coming of age – over the next four years it will be heading into ‘entry level ten’ phase, and then looking beyond. That ten-year point is like graduation – you have a ten year old that be carried in supermarkets alongside all those other tens in Tesco. You have something that ordinary consumers will be interested in, provided the price is right. Up to this point Dingle’s NAS releases have been in tiny batches with a sizeable price tag. I would hope that this will be a little better balanced in future, as Glen Moray was an excellent value-for-money whisky. And while Dingle currently has that special aura, if it is going to complete on the world stage it will need to engage in a little experimentation – Waterford is coming out of the blocks in the next 12 months, as is PJ Rigney’s grand cru whiskey, so really, there is some stiff competition.
Coull’s move here is an exciting development – and an endorsement of just how boomy our boom is becoming. All that said, he still has to wrestle with single pot still, which one Irish distiller eloquently described to me as ‘an absolute cunt to make’. So best of luck with that Graham!
I’ve no doubt the Coulls will get a céad míle fáilte here, and seeing what they do with Dingle is going to be really interesting. But man, good luck to them dealing with that Kerry accent.
One response to “Coull runnings”
Great article and great news for Dingle!