Triple Distilled Communications

A blog about whiskey and other matters of interest

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Freelance writer. Bylines: Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Irish Tatler Man, Evening Echo, The Spirits Business, Distilled. Proud owner of the award-defying TripleDistilled.Blog, Ireland’s Least Successful Blog™.

Author: Bill Linnane

  • A zillion photos of the Cork Whiskey Society event in the city tonight. Amazing line-up as always. Will try to write something up on it when I get a chance, most likely when my kids finish college.

  • Holy waters

    As monks go, St Columba was pretty rock ‘n’ roll. A great-great-grandson of High King Niall of the Nine Hostages, he once started a war over a copyright issue and ended up narrowly avoiding excommunication by exiling himself to Scotland. He sailed past Islay, where Irish monks introduced distilling to the Scots, and set up…

  • A good death

    Working in an emergency department changes the way you see the world. My nine months working in CUH ED taught me compassion and gratitude in equal measure, but it mainly taught me that my dad’s old adage of ‘your health is your wealth’ is tragically accurate. After the first few months working there I realised my…

  • Weapon of choice

    What is a baseball bat? Is it a piece of sports equipment, used by athletes the world over, a symbol of the unifying power of team sports? Or is it a weapon, used by thugs the world over, a symbol of gang violence? Is it the embodiment of America’s national pastime – or is it…

  • Chaos Theory

    Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. ALDOUS HUXLEY, Do What You Will When Kurt Ballou was in his early teens, his parents brought him across America in a camper van for the summer holidays. With no siblings to keep him company, music became his friend.…

  • The final frontier

    In June 1940, a man walked from the surf onto a beach on the Dingle peninsula. He stopped to bury a radio transmitter in the sand, walked inland until he stumbled across an old railway line and then headed towards the town of Dingle. With an hour to kill until the bus to Tralee, he…

  • Smithfield of dreams

    If you redevelop it, they will come. ‘They’ being tourists. Irish Distillers, Ireland’s leading supplier of spirits and wines and producer of the world’s most well-known and successful Irish whiskeys, has today announced plans for a major redevelopment of the Old Jameson Distillery in Smithfield, representing a total investment of €11 million. This new look…

  • International Wine & Spirit Competition – Irish winners

    All the winners that listed the Republic of Ireland as their country of origin – including the Cotswolds Cream Liqueur.

  • How to say goodbye in Irish

      I occasionally try to get my dad to join a club. It’d be good for you, I say, you should get out more. His reply is always the same: ‘I’m not a joiner’. Like Groucho Marx, he steadfastly refuses to join any club that would have him as a member. I’m a lot like…

  • I am sitting in a dark room taking pretentious photos of whisky I just bought

    I have no idea what I am doing with my life.