There is a road in my home town of Midleton that floods at the slightest opportunity. Running alongside the town estuary, all it takes for the Bailick Road to disappear under water is a moderately high tide and a few hours of rain. There were attempts over the years to alleviate the problem, such as when the council reclaimed some land and built a small park on it. The park soon became a hotspot for teenage drinking, as it was away from prying eyes, in a less than scenic area alongside the fragrant wetlands of the estuary and adjacent to the town bypass. All this changed, however, with the erection of the Kindred Spirits sculpture in the middle of the park.
Five years ago the local council began a programme of erecting statues and monuments around the town. Costing upwards of half a million euro in total, there was the 1798 Pikeman outside the courthouse (whose scroll was stolen from his hand shortly after he appeared), a monument to ‘Angel of the Cassiar’ Nellie Cashman (who some claim was actually from Cobh), and a statue of a small boy being eaten alive by some rabid geese, supposedly to celebrate the town’s famous market, The Goose’s Acre, but which actually looks like it was a scene from The Wicker Man. There were other statues, but the most famous of them all is the steel feather sculpture by Alex Pentek, created to commemorate the kindness shown by the Choctaw people, who sent money to Ireland during the Famine.
Pentek’s Kindred Spirits isn’t just one of the most beautiful of all the works produced under the programme, but it also shines a light on a little known story of human kindness – that a people on the other wise of the world who suffered so much could rally together to help others who they had never met. Almost two centuries later, it is still an inspiring story, one that deserved to be revived and celebrated. However, as someone who regularly has to give directions to tourists looking for the sculpture, it’s hard to understand the decision to locate it outside the town centre. Perhaps the council never expected this statue to become the most celebrated, or perhaps they were simply running out of places to put them, what with the statues of feral geese and a scroll-less Pikeman in the centre of town, but it still is a crying shame they didn’t just put the feathers in the large park next to the Jameson Heritage Centre, one of the region’s largest tourist draws. The current location of Kindred Spirits is difficult to find, and not especially scenic. Also, if you happen to visit at high tide or after heavy rain, you may need a canoe to get to it.
Beyond their locations, the series of monuments caused much debate locally – why spend all this public money on art? Why not spend it on something practical, like flood defences? Surely we could take that money for public art and just spend it all on potholes, meaning our public spaces would be paved like an airport runway but without a trace of personality, creativity or imagination – three things the Irish people pride themselves on?
Those who decried the spend on the statues in Midleton – and I include myself among that pantheon of gits – can now eat humble pie, as the Kindred Spirits work and the awareness it created has led the Taoiseach to create a scholarship for Choctaw students to attend university in Ireland from 2019 onwards. I can only hope that should any of them wish to visit the Kindred Spirits sculpture, that they do it during outside of the wet season, which here in east Cork is the months of July through to April, inclusive.
Should they get trapped here by floods in the longer term, they could easily adapt to life in east Cork, as their sport of stickball is largely similar to hurling – as anthropologist Kendall Blanchard noted of the game in the 18th Century: “While players could tackle, block, or use any reasonable method to interfere with the other team’s movement of the ball, there were implicit limits to acceptable violence.” If the term ‘acceptable violence’ doesn’t sum up Cork schools hurling, then I don’t know what does.
The most important message of the Choctaw donation to Ireland was that there were people who cared about what was happening to us – there were those who heard about the horrors of the Famine and knew it was wrong, and did what they could to help. Populist politicians here who offer soundbites about how we should ‘look after our own’ before we help refugees and migrants, need to think about the Choctaw people, who faced genocide at the hands of European invaders, and still believed in humanity enough to send money to Europe to help us. Charity may begin at home, but it certainly doesn’t end there.
The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham was a man of vision. In the late 1700s, his ideas were seen as completely radical, as he opposed slavery, called for the separation of Church and state, advocated for women’s rights, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, legalisation of divorce, animal rights, and the abolition of the death penalty and criminalisation of abuse of children.
Among his most memorable contributions, however, was the panopticon – a type of prison where order and control is exerted through observation and surveillance. The prison was a curved space, with open fronted cells. In the centre sat an observation booth where the wardens would watch the prisoners from behind a screen, so that they were unseen.
Bentham felt that the inmates would act as though they were being watched – and therefore not commit any illegal acts – even if the guards were not actively watching them. Bentham believed that we behave in a more civil fashion when we believe we are being watched, despite a thousand years of human history in which we believed various all-powerful deities were watching us and we still went ahead and did whatever we wanted.
But in the modern world, the all-seeing eye of the gods has been replaced by the all-seeing iPhone, or whatever cheaper, better equivalent you can afford. The fact is now that if something remarkable happens in a public place, it will end up on a phone and very shortly thereafter, on the internet. All this makes it even more amazing that someone had the bright idea of stealing a JCB and using it to break into a shop on a day when half the country was out on the street chucking snowballs at each other and filming themselves falling over.
There are obviously many positives to social media, especially when you have been snowed into your house. The big snow of 1982 may be the stuff of legend, but it is a distant memory for most of us. The images that flooded the internet in the last week of six-foot deep snow drifts and 12 foot tall snowpersons helped us all feel a little more connected to each other while we sat around a superser in our icy prisons. It was a bizarre few days. Brief forays into the outdoors reminded us that snow is actually quite cold, a fact we had forgotten as really our only other experience of it is in the video for Last Christmas by Wham, in which they all had lovely bouffant hair to keep them warm, like a squirrel uses its bushy tail to wrap around itself.
It was amazing to see real, proper snow, but it was also unnerving. Going for a walk and taking photos of it felt like the people who walked out towards the disappearing ocean during the tsunami in 2004, not realising that what they were seeing was not normal and that they should really be running in the opposite direction as fast as they could. The snowstorms of the last week, coming so soon after the wreckage of Ophelia, felt more than a little ominous. As our planet slowly smothers, it would appear that we are going to prepare for more frequent weather events like this one, by stocking up on big dirty bags of coal, six packs of gas canisters for the superser, and a big diesel-guzzling four wheel drive to transport all our toxic fuels back to our poorly insulated houses.
Despite never being prepared for any event in my life – from the Leaving Cert, to marriage, to last year’s tax deadlines – somehow we managed to be ready for the snow. Having a large family means you are always ready for the feeding of the five thousand, with stacks of unlabelled containers containing non-descript meals languishing in the freezer. Dinner became ‘chicken with red sauce’ or ‘chicken with brown sauce and possibly onions’ as we worked our way through meals of indeterminate age, but it was in the provision of treats that we fell down.
In our post-apocalyptic household, treats are the main currency – used to barter, bribe, or lure children in from a force ten blizzard. Towards the end of the four day test of endurance, I was tearing the house apart looking for even a discarded Freddo, left over from the good times before civilisation fell. In the end I found a few chunks of birthday cake at the bottom of the freezer; whose birthday, I don’t know, and what vintage was unknown, but it was chocolate cake and that was all that mattered. I briefly wondered to myself if this was what it was like for Crean and Shackleton, as I made myself another Nespresso to wash down the cake.
Thanks to the internet and our propensity to record every moment of our lives, we have all become little surveillance cameras; a truck jackknifed in Cork last month and four people were fined for trying to capture images and video of the crash on their phones, even though there were gardaí and emergency services at the scene. Our desire to create content as offerings to the great gods of the internet has led us to lose a sense of agency – many of us have become watchers, as opposed to doers. But however bleak the scenes of a Lidl being torn apart like something from Mad Max were, the snow also brought home how innately good we are, and how fast we act to help others when called upon, whether or not we think we are being watched or filmed.
As for Bentham, he would probably be glad to know that he was mostly right about people, even if his prison design wasn’t his greatest idea. As for the man himself, after his death his skeleton was dressed in his clothes and mounted in a glass case with a wax version of his own head, and place in the halls of University College London. His cadaver even contains a webcam, and you can log on and see the world as he does, for better or for worse.
In May 1846, a wagon train of pioneers set out for from Missouri for California, looking for a new life and the dream of fulfilling their manifest destiny. The group, led by George Donner and Armagh man James F Reed, became trapped by snow high in a pass known as Hastings Cutoff in the Sierra Nevada. They spent four months there, and with food running out, they ate their horses and oxen as they died, and then ate the bodies of their fellow travellers after they had succumbed to the brutal winter. The Donner Party, as they became known, became synonymous with the real-world cruelties of life in the American west, and a symbol of what humans can and will do to survive.
The Beast From The East is a pretty snappy name for a storm. It tells you which direction it is coming from and also that it isn’t exactly going to be a grand soft few days. In a country that loves to talk about the weather, we are starved of extreme events. Granted, there is the odd Ophelia that blows in and levels half the forests in the country, but most of the time it’s just the usual meteorological ennui of rain, grey skies and fairly mild temperatures.
The Beast From The East is different – this is some sort of hellstorm, one that means we need to cancel every journey except those from your bed to the jacks, as the whole country is going to shut down. No employer would expect you to risk the ten-minute walk from your flat to the office, because what if you slipped on the ice and someone saw? That would be embarrassing. All over the country shelves are being emptied of bread and milk, which seems a little hasty as they are among the most perishable items in the supermarket. It won’t be much of a storm if you can survive it on tea and sandwiches; this isn’t the Stations or a roadside picnic on the way to an All-Ireland – this is the end of the world, so maybe we should be buying tinned goods rather than a sliced pan that will be moldy before you get it home.
Of course, there is always the chance of everyone’s worst nightmare – that you get snowed into work. If this is a possibility then you need to start facing the grim reality that you are probably going to have to eat at least one co-worker to survive. The guy with the sandwich trolley probably won’t be in, as someone already ate him while he was waiting at the Luas stop, so you are going to need to start looking around and eyeing up your colleagues as the poorly dressed snack boxes that they are. Start thinking about flavours – this is really going to be like an episode of Ready Steady Cook, where you just have to make-do with a rubbish selection of bruised vegetables from the bargain bin. What about the guy who is always vaping – do you really need a weird menthol aftertaste after your finished eating him, sher that will be even more unpleasant than the guilt. How about Smokey Joe, he will be first to fall, as he will still have to go outside for his ten Major a day and will probably get crushed by a wooly mammoth, which will conveniently tenderise him into a mesquite burger.
Nobody is being forced to turn to cannibalism during Snowmageddon ‘018, but where is the fun in riding it out sitting on a radiator in the break area, eating vending machine snacks with a shelf life of a thousand years? That’s what you do every day for lunch. This is your one opportunity to taste human flesh, or The Chicken Of The M50, as it is known. Check up on neighbours – are any of them potential meal deals you could be tucking into? What about loved ones – who hasn’t read Jonathan Swift’s gluten-free cookbook, A Modest Proposal, and thought ‘Cronos really had the right idea’? Obviously, none of this is genuine. I’m not advocating you eat your young, although speaking for myself, my youngest child is one of those perennially chubby toddlers who is hard to look at without seeing him as a roast chicken.
The Beast From The East is a reminder of how much we love high drama. Deep down there is the hope that nature takes a massive snowy dump on us, and we don’t have to go anywhere for a day or two, as when you reach a certain age in life, cancelling plans is one of the best feelings in the world. If this storm doesn’t hammer us into oblivion, it will be really disappointing, especially for anyone who has already prepared themselves for a Donner Party dinner party. As for James F Reed, he eventually rescued his family from the mountains, and went on to become a real estate tycoon. They denied ever eating any human flesh to survive – and were also one of only two families in the Donner Party who survived intact.
Isaac Asimov loved the future. As a professor of biochemistry and prolific science fiction writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books, along with a vast archive of correspondence. He is considered, along with Robert A Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke, one of the greatest names in sci-fi. Asimov’s embrace of the future and all its endless possibilities is still heartening two decades after his death – he once wrote ‘I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them’. It’s a sentiment we can all relate to, given how we freak out if we leave our phone at home by mistake and have to spend a working day without Candy Crush or Facebook, or if our WiFi isn’t allowing us to download every film nominated for an Oscar this year in less than five minutes.
One of Asimov’s most notable contributions to sci-fi are his laws of robotics, conceived as part of his idea of positronic robots – benevolent machines that would ultimately help us make a better world. The laws are: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Watching the latest video from robotics experts Boston Dynamics, you can only hope that they have those laws written in huge letters on the wall of their lab. The US company are known for releasing videos showing their latest developments in mechanical evolution – first they made an ungainly tetrapod that could run, albeit in an awkward fashion. Then they showed it going up and down stairs, which as any Whovian would tell you was the only way to avoid history’s most terrifying robots, the Daleks.
But last week’s video from the firm was their most unsettling yet. It showed one of their robots politely opening a door and letting another robot through it. This proved all our worst fears – the robots have developed manners. This is how they will get us, through simple acts of kindness. One by one your co-workers will be replaced by biomechanoid drones, and you won’t even complain as one of them made you a cup of coffee, fixed the printer for you, or bought you a pint on a work night out. ‘01001001001? Sher he’s grand, he covered for me the day I went home early with a hangover, sound lad, apart from his dead soulless eyes’.
Next thing you know the robots are showing up at county board meetings talking about how the grassroots club-bots are the binary code of the GAA, or at community litter picks where they win everyone over by virtue of having hoovers for arms. Then they will be running for a council job, promising to fix the roads by offering us all flying autonomous cars that will gets us home safe and sound after enjoying a skinful of their new alcoholic beverage Soylent Green, which tastes slightly familiar, mainly because it was made from members of your family.
I say we reject these polite robots and the terrible future they offer – let’s stick to malfunctioning printers and fax machines, or the most reassuringly awful technology in existence, self service checkouts; yes there is a bag in the checkout area you bleeping moron, I just told you it’s there, dear god where is a human when you need one?
The humans, it would appear, are still very much here. The comfort in the Boston Dynamics videos is that these robots are not completely autonomous – there is still a human within the operations somewhere.
It is in Artificial Intelligence that our quasi-luddite fears become genuine concerns. It’s not that robots will start wiping us out, a la Terminator – although some might argue that drone strikes already do that for us – but that a robot could do our job for us. The advice from the experts would appear to be – find a job that needs you to be human. Great advice for any heavy hitting earners: accountants – algorithms made flesh, medics – Dr Google, anyone?, and solicitors – settle everything with a drone strike!
In fact, it’s hard to think of a job that couldn’t be taken by a decent, polite robot. Who hasn’t sat in the back of a taxi wishing it was a Johnny Cab from Total Recall with a mute button to shut off the banter? Or dreamed of a robot stylist as your barber chats about the footie when all you wanted was to stare at your own reflection, contemplating your decaying cells as he trims your ear hair? Who hasn’t read this column and wondered if I wasn’t really written by a malfunctioning Furby, randomly rolling around on the keyboard? The robots are coming, not for us, but our jobs.
I look forward to a day when human resources departments are exactly that – a screening process to stop these chrome interlopers from taking our jobs. A trip to HR would be a lot more fun if they were all tooled-up Blade Runners, ditching their psychometric testing in favour of a Voight-Kampff machine, ready to weed out any ‘bots who got past their interviews and blast them in the head. First up they should test Barry from accounts, I’m fairly sure he is a robot as there’s something off about him, not least in the fact that he is always humming.
Asimov’s understanding of technology wasn’t what made him such a great writer, but in his understanding, like all great sci-fi writers, of what makes us human. God created us in his image, and our biggest fear is that we might do the same with robots – that they could be imperfect, damaged creations like us. If we adhered to his laws of robotics, the world might even be a better place. As Asimov said, the saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Indo col week 42, a Valentine’s special which has somehow made me History’s Greatest Monster.
I am not especially romantic. My wife would say that I don’t have a romantic fibre in my being (as opposed to not having a ‘romantic bone in my body’, which sounds odd), but I see myself as being romantic in a practical way. The kids wake at 5am, I’m the one who gets up with them, when she comes home from work I have her dinner ready, and I am a regular Sisyphus when it comes to dragging bins up and down driveways. I do, however, have my inspired moments, and one of those was the first time I kissed her when we were teenagers. I spotted her across the dancefloor during the slow set in the local nightclub, walked over to her and, without saying anything, kissed her. Amazingly, she didn’t punch me in the mouth or call security, although she probably regrets that decision from time to time, such as on Valentine’s Day 2011 when I gave her a thermos flask as a gift (with no card). I tried to talk my way out of it by saying it was a symbol of our nourishing, warming love, but apparently it was a symbol of what a terrible husband I am, and was thus dispatched to the charity shop, unopened, where it nourished the coffers of the National Council For The Blind.
I like the story of our first kiss, and imagine that some day, I will tell it to my grandkids. One detail that I would probably omit was the fact that I was on ecstacy at the time of that first kiss, because nobody wants to think that they might not be here if it were not for grandad’s substance abuse problem.
We dated briefly, then she dumped me as she came to realise that I wasn’t dark and interesting, I was just mental and was treating my body as some sort of chemical recycling centre. We went our separate ways, but a couple of years later, we dated again, with the same result, although she does console me by telling me that it wasn’t just that I was mental then too, it was also my shiny Ben Sherman shirts and Jean Paul Gaultier cologne.
Obviously I made some adjustments – working on my mental health, releasing drugs are a cancer of your soul, and also buying some new clothes – and not long after 9/11 the new me sauntered back into her life, using the destabilising of the geopolitical climate as an opening line: ‘Wow this situation in America is so intense, would you like to go for a drink to help us both relax?’ And so it was that we fell in love at roughly the same time that America fell into its various military quagmires across the Middle East. Seventeen years on, our love – like the USA’s madcap crusades – is still going strong.
Love isn’t always about finding your heart’s counterpoint in another, or a soulmate preordained to be your special someone. Sometimes it’s just finding someone who is the right kind of crazy for you. As our ancestors would put it, for every auld sock there’s an auld shoe. Even the most black-hearted nihilists would have to admit that if Fred and Rosemary West were able to find each other, then there is hope for us all. Although obviously, real love doesn’t involve quite so much murder.
Astute readers will probably assume the reason I’m writing this is as some sort of cheapskate Valentine’s gift when I should be paying a skywriter to take to the air and spell all this out in chemtrails. Sadly, my wife doesn’t read this column, informing me that it’s bad enough having to listen to me droning on at home without having to endure me in print as well. I can’t say I blame her, as even to me my voice sounds like a hoover with a clogged filter. The fact she doesn’t read this also gives me an upper hand in arguments ‘You never support me, you don’t even read my column!’ So that’s checkmate on the thermos flask.
My wife and I fell for each other because we saw the same sadness in each other that we felt inside. We were less like the two halves of some gilt-edged heart-shaped locket and really more like the two halves of a troubling Rorschach print. I can’t look back on our life together and cherry pick the good things from the bad; sometimes our poor choices led to great things, and it’s impossible to separate my teenage self-destruction from our first kiss and the great adventure that it started. To quote Shaw, we all have skeletons in our closet, it’s just that sometimes you have to take them out and make them dance, even if it’s for a slow set like this one.
Wee 41 of the column and this time I get political, with terrible results.
As a portmanteau, Brexit works quite well. It rolls of the tongue, and its similarity to the word breakfast gave great material to headline writers: Full English Brexit, Brexit buffet, bed and Brexit – all potentially great headlines. Granted, none of them make sense right now, but you just come up with the snappy headline first, and then everything follows after that, much like Brexit itself, or when Elton John out on loads of weight and some wag in the tabloids ran the photos because a sub came up with the headline ‘Goodbye Normal Jeans’.
Sadly, the only part of Brexit that appears to work so far is the term itself. The tidy little quip is the only part of the UK’s will they/won’t they trial separation that isn’t a dysfunctional mess. Yet somehow, there are some who think that Ireland should adopt an ideology that neither works as a portmanteau nor as a concept – Irexit.
From the get go, this word does not work. It is clunky, and slows down your eye as you try to figure out how to pronounce it – Ire-Zit? I – regsit? Or perhaps the gallic Irezii? Surely whoever forced this term into existence could have tapped into the usual seam of rampant nationalism by offering us ‘Ourland’ or ‘Hiberniaaah go on’, with a poster of Mrs Doyle in full Nazi regalia. No, they went with Irexit instead, and even hosted a conference around this stupid theme.
I was glad to hear there was a solid turnout from that most silenced of majorities – white Christian males. They are the voiceless ones in society, they were told, and who could possibly disagree – the last thousand years of human history is devoid of any mention of this vast, annoying section of society. How many times have you offered an opinion on human rights on the internet, with no-one jumping into your timeline to tell you how things really are for the struggling gender. Where oh where are all the angry white men you wonder, as you yearn for a flood of ‘well actually…’ corrections, casual racism, nonsense logic and death threats. Who will stand up for the forgotten millions of angry white blokes? Nigel Farage, that’s who.
As a preamble to his headline slot at the conference, Farage went on Marian Finucane’s show to offer some thrilling insights into Irish history, pondering why we fought the British for our freedom only to be ‘ruled by Brussels’. It seems a little childish to bring up the 800 years of brutal British rule again, but it’s hard not to. While his ancestors standing back as we died of starvation in our millions may seem like ancient history, it’s still a bit of a stretch to compare the EU building a load of roads for us to the brutal rule of a nation that saw our people as akin to dogs. Still, perhaps Nigel’s grasp of history isn’t that great, as last September he somehow ended up talking at a far right rally in Germany after being invited there by the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he had even the vaguest knowledge of the Holocaust, would he?
The themes of the Irexit conference were the usual smorgasboard of half-baked notions held by the angry white men of the internet – the media is silencing them (despite much of the audience on the day being journalists), the EU has too much control over Ireland (despite the clear evidence that Ireland really could have done with a lot more control in the years 2005-2007) and Nigel is the man to lead us into this glorious future (‘us’ being an army of internet weirdos).
What made the conference more remarkable was that people actually paid to go and see a man who looks like Kermit the Frog and sounds like Oliver Cromwell tell them in a plummy English accent that they should do what he says.
The turn-out at the conference was reassuringly low, but the problem with events like this is that it gives legitimacy to an ideology that is inherently wrong. No matter how I chortle at it, I know that there are people who will read the coverage and think that Farage is right, that civilisation is falling, and immigrants are to blame. The Farage Roadshow may make for a laughable affair to most of us, but there are many who find truth in his lies, who believe they are oppressed, or under threat, or are the guardians of their race. You have to question where the line is between emboldening the supposedly disenfranchised white Christian males to become politically engaged, and the sort of deranged anti-immigration rhetoric that led to Thomas Mair murdering Jo Cox in cold blood. How far do the right have to go before they are seen as a threat to democracy, to decency, and to civilisation?
Do we really need Farage and his ilk, bringing their PT-Barnum-meets-Joseph-Goebells sideshow here, trying to set up our own Alt-Right here – or Alt-Deis, to use the gaelic? We’re only just getting over a hundred years of having lads in black marching around, preaching at us about how to live our lives, and frankly, we’ve really had enough; we need to be more open, more connected to Europe and less insular. So to to quote Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, go sell crazy somewhere else Nigel, we’re all stocked up here.
Me, getting some free shit in April 2015 at the launch of ‘Bottle Your Own’ in the Jameson Experience, Midleton. Blogging pays guys! Pic by John Sheehan Photography
Loving whiskey can be a bit lonely. It’s a bit like trainspotting – both involve a love of history and engineering, lots of note taking and bringing a camera everywhere. Granted, whiskey is a lot more fun, as you get to do all those things whilst half cut, but you get the idea – it can be a solitary affair. It can be hard to find others who share your boundless enthusiasm for what most people see as ‘just a drink’. This is where the internet comes in. In the absence of a local network of fellow enthusiasts, we have a digital fan club that spreads across the globe.
When I go online I can see thousands of people who are equally enamored with whiskey, sharing insights, reviews and photos – but we could always do with more, especially for Irish whiskey. More voices, more opinions, more reviews, more insights, more people holding industry to account. So cry havoc and let slip the blogs of war with this handy guide to destroying your life via blogging.
Writing – When I worked as a subeditor we used to have a Leaving Cert (Irish GCSE) diarist who would write daily columns about the exams. Some of the columnists were great – but some were what we would call ‘Englishmakers’. The kids were so used to writing to impress an English teacher that they would be doing linguistic acrobatics. Perhaps in some parallel universe their work would be seen as good, but we thought they were shit, and spent a lot of time unpicking the elaborate tapestry they had woven. So the best tip I could give anyone on writing is via Yoda – there is no try, only do. Don’t try to write, just sit down the hammer the keys. Don’t worry about crafting a masterpiece or you will take a lot of the fun out of writing and a lot of fun out of the writing itself. Just give it a lash. As long as what you say comes from the heart, everything else will work just fine. And, obviously enough, never, ever plagiarise. In the past I have plagiarised, which is why I feel completely comfortable telling you that only cunts do it. Write every word you can, give attributions where necessary, and shoot straight.
Platforms – I started blogging on MySpace, the clunky mess where I more or less ended my career, then moved on to Tumblr, which I soon realised was a hipster wasteland, and then finally came to WordPress. It’s user-friendly, but it has awful storage. To get unlimited storage you need to buy premium – a princely 300 per year – which I have and get almost no use out of apart from being able to store all the rubbish posts I imported from my Tumblr when I started here. If I could go back I would host images elsewhere, like Flickr, which is free, and then embed them here. But for the vast majority of folks not uploading massive image files, either Blogger or WordPress are perfect, with lots of nice templates to make you look like a pro…or at least semi-pro.
Images – Speaking of looking like a pro, a half decent camera is a good thing to have. I have a Nikon D3200, which retails for about 400 euro. It takes lovely photos, is sturdy and not so freakishly expensive that you would be scared to bring it anywhere. Mine is always with me and has been bashed off several stills over the years, along with almost falling into several washtubs. Nice photos can make all the difference to distillery trips and can catch details that you might miss otherwise. To make the photos look better I use Google Nik, a free software package. It has very simple editing software, but also has loads of cool templates which means you can edit your own photos easily, or you can also work on product shots you get from PR firms to make your use of them stand out from the crowd. Humans are visual creatures – a nice layout with strong visual content is always a good thing, even if it’s just millions of photos of bottles, or pictures of you clutching John Teeling or Charlie MacLean.
Features – There is always something to write about with whiskey – especially with Irish whiskey. There are all these new distilleries just waiting to tell their stories. Wherever you live in Ireland, there is going to be one within driving distance. Ring them up, ask them if you can pop round, and get your geek on. One handy piece of advice is to download a dictaphone app to your phone and record the visit. This is also a good tip for when you attend tastings with reps. You don’t want to be scribbling details in your notebook when you can relax and enjoy, and then go back over what was said later to check any details you might be hazy about. Use your own internal barometer on what to include in any coverage and what to leave out. Obviously, I never follow this advice, as I write massively overblown long-form pieces, but it keeps me busy and thus out of trouble. Or does it?
Trouble – If you don’t like a whiskey, you say it. It doesn’t matter if you got sent the bottle for free and you fell you should really say nice things about it, don’t. If it’s not good enough, then why should anyone else go out and buy it, simply because you didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the creators? They aren’t going to learn that way. Everything is, of course, relative to price, and is worth bearing in mind with every review, no matter how you got your hands on the sample. Give credit where it’s due, and don’t be negative just for the sake of it. Everyone has their favourite brands or distilleries, but try to be objective and give everyone a fair crack of the whip.
Evidence versus opinion – If you are going to take on a brand over claims they make, you need to make sure you have cold, hard facts. Gather evidence – screenshots, PDFs, newspaper interviews. You need to be able to stand over what you say. This is the internet – assume everyone in the world is going to read what you write. Be nice to brands when they deserve it, be critical when it is needed, and be clinical when you need to take someone down. Offering your thoughts on the liquid is fine – it’s not defamatory to say a whiskey is shit, that’s honest opinion – but all the other cultural stuff about sourcing, marketing etc really needs to be backed up in fact, otherwise you could end up defaming someone.
Defamation – To defame someone is to lower their opinion in the eyes of right minded people. One classic example of this from the whisky world is the annual shit tornado that comes when Jim Murray releases his best-of list. People line up all over the internet to make accusations about how he comes to make the choices he does, yet no-one seems to be able to produce evidence to back up the slurs. Frankly, I’m amazed no-one has been sued over it – perhaps he doesn’t care, or perhaps he doesn’t need the hassle. But it’s worth noting that if you make an accusation against someone, they are not legally required to prove you wrong, you are legally required to prove yourself right. Unless you can back up what you said with evidence, you are fucked. Of course, there are always going to people who claim they have been defamed simply because they don’t like what you say, or because their feelings are hurt. So know what the law states, and remember that this is the internet, you need to get used to the rough and tumble of online discourse. Defamation is a very, very expensive process, both to prove, or to have proved against you. If an incorrect or inaccurate statement has been made, usually a correction or clarification is issued and that puts the matter to bed. Never be afraid to say you are sorry. Unless you weren’t wrong, then just tell them to go fuck themselves.
Don’t be a mouthpiece – Approach brands for samples, bottles, photos, press releases, their first born – there is no shame in asking for free stuff. When I worked in the paper there were senior reporters who used to blag free holidays for themselves, or free concert tickets, or free anything. Newsrooms are awash in freebies, to the point that we used to be turning down free holidays. Take a freebie as long as it doesn’t compromise you. If you’re in the blogging game to gain favour with distilleries, that’s fine, but your blog will be shit. Nobody wants to visit your site to read a nonsensical press release. If you don’t have time to rewrite what they sent you just use the salient points and cut out the colour – give the data, but try to do your own tasting notes. Your tasting notes are unique to you, your memories, your culture, your life. I love tasting notes as they are objectively meaningless, but are a brilliant way to profile people, as one might do with a serial killer: ‘This is the Zodiac speaking, and I am detecting notes of heather honey’.
Shamelessly whore yourself out – You need to help people find your blog. I use Twitter, so when I tweet a link to a blog post, most of the traffic comes from there. Most people use Facebook, which works more or less the same. On a related note, never buy followers. It is deeply transparent and truly desperate. Make sure you use relevant tags in your blog posts. WordPress and most other blog platforms have time settings so you can write a load of posts and then set them to be published at a rate of one a week. I write all my pieces in Google Docs, which is available everywhere (obviously), and then I rework them and copy them onto WordPress and quickly throw the layout together. It is all pretty simple – I’m really quite the Luddite, so if I can do it, pretty much anyone can. Or, you can get your kids to who you how to do it. It is also worth getting business cards – Vistaprint are cheap and cheerful and have loads of options, Moo have nicer ones that cost more but look far superior. Make sure before you buy that you are happy with your blog title, domain name, email address and so on as once the cards are printed you will be held to them. Also, be reasonable – I got 700 cards printed up in 2015, and think I gave away about 40, max. Even though they are handy, they are also quite cheesy and a little bit Eighties. Like, who couldn’t find you using Google?
Work at it – I’ve always loved the internet, as I was the kid in class who couldn’t shut up. Twitter and WordPress are just extensions of that. But blogging still takes effort. You won’t really know how much you like it until you try, but it is, at the very least, worth a shot – all the freelance work I get these days comes from a blog post I wrote about whiskey back in 2016; for some young blades their blogs became a way into the industry as ambassadors, but for most of us it is a hobby that gives us a way to share our thoughts and our passion with other fans. With that in mind, here are a few of the Irish whiskey blogs that I read and enjoy:
Liquid Irish – the first whiskey blog I ever read and still my high benchmark for food and drink blogging. I still use David’s site as a resource for information not available elsewhere about the nitty gritty of Irish whiskey. He is Obi Wan Kenobi to my Jar Jar Binks.
Westmeath Whiskey World – Short, snappy pieces about Irish and Scotch, thinkpieces about the future of Irish whiskey, and a really unique voice. Really like this one.
That’s Dram Good – From entry level to high end, Omar knows his whiskeys. Excellent taste and although just started, Omar has been writing and posting at a wicked speed.
Dave’s Irish Whiskey – Another passionate fan starting a blog, one of Dave’s first posts is about how he drove 500km for a bottle of whiskey. Hoping this blog will be the On The Road of Irish whiskey blogs.
Whiskey or Whisky? – Liberties-based Marc asks the eternal question – how should we spell the word anyway? A welcome focus on the new/old distilling hotspot, the Liberties.
WhiskeyJAC – Jamie is NI-based, and is putting out the posts at a solid rate; coverage of events, pieces on other spirits, and no aversion to a dram of Scotch.
Bourbon Paddy – A blog about bourbon from Ireland. What’s not to love? Some amazing bourbons out there, and this is a good place to learn more about them.
Causeway Coast – Phil writes for the excellent Malt but his own NI-based blog is packed with excellent news, reviews and features.
Pot Stilled – Matt Healy moved on to become Tullamore DEW’s man on the ground in Philly (fly Eagles fly!), so his blog is a little quieter these days, but still has excellent critical mythbusting pieces on whiskey.
Whisky Belfast – Stuart’s blog gets quite deep into the detail, like an episode of The Wire. A real nerd’s blog, which in whiskey terms is actually quite the compliment.
Insider blogs:
Chapel Gate blog – A voice from inside the industry, but one that shoots straight. Louise McGuane has insights into how the industry works that bloggers never will.
Waterford Distillery blog – Mark Reynier is a masterful communicator. You may not agree with him, but you can still enjoy the message.
Blackwater Distillery blog – Peter Mulryan, like Reynier and McGuane, makes the industry more interesting by going full Jerry Maguire on it. Big things ahead for their distillery, share the journey with the blog.
I’ll update this list as I find new ones, but this is a good start. Obviously this isn’t a comprehensive list of all Irish whiskey blogs, but these are the ones I enjoy. It’s heartening to see so many newcomers, as this is all about diversity and discourse. There is no single voice of Irish whiskey – it’s up to all of us to help guide people through the category, and share the passion and knowledge we have of the subject with the world. And sher, if you get some free booze out of it, how bad.
In the original ending of The Emperor’s New Clothes, there was no child. Hans Christian Andersen had written the story as an adaptation of an earlier folk tale, where devious tailors play on the insecurities of a vain emperor, telling him that they have made him an outfit that is visible only to those of great intellect and taste. The emperor parades through the city in his non-existent garment, as the crowd, scared to be seen as ignorant fools, applaud his wondrous attire. In his first version of it, the story ended there.
It was only when the work was on its way to the printers that Andersen decided to add the child who points out that the emperor is in a state of undress, thus causing his undoing. There are many theories as to why Anderson made this change, but it generally believed that it had a lot to do with his own experience of the bourgeoisie in Copenhagen. Having strived to gain acceptance among them, he was disappointed by their elitism and snobbery once he was accepted into their ranks.
If I had known the Hyde blog post was going to be read by so many people, I might have swore less. Or I might have swore more, it’s hard to say. But there was only one minor change that I made to the text. I added the word ‘many’ to the statement on whiskey bloggers. There are many who endlessly post press releases instead of critical, creative reviews or thinkpieces, those who are willing to operate as mouthpieces for industry rather than challenging the status quo – or, as the Whisky Sponge titled them, bribe units.
However, there are also many who are excellent, and write insightful, thorough, thought-provoking features and reviews – the ones who are more than happy to point out that the emperor wears no clothes. Much of what I have learned about whiskey, its craft and culture, and how the industry works, has come from blogs.
So that was the only change to the Hyde post. The rest of it – including the comments section – I stand over 100%. You may not like the tone, or the content, but anyone who feels like actually accusing me of perpetuating falsehoods can take me to court. The statute of limitations on defamation is seven years, so we have plenty time.
The first defence of the Hyde business model was ‘everyone knew it was Cooley’, which begs the question: Who is ‘everyone’? In reality, ‘everyone’ is the tiny collective of Irish whiskey fans who watch the industry closely, can decode the language and understand the dog whistles. How many consumers who bought a bottle of Hyde Whiskey could actually tell you where it was from? Perhaps they wouldn’t care either way, perhaps they just liked the bottle – and it does genuinely have a good look – but it’s worth noting the case of Templeton Rye. Consider this from the Chicago Tribune in 2015:
Under a preliminary settlement announced Tuesday, anyone who has bought a bottle of Templeton Rye since 2006 is entitled to a refund of $3 per bottle, up to six bottles, if lacking proof of purchase. For anyone with proof of purchase, the refund is double: $6 per bottle, up to six bottles.
The terms were hammered out almost a year after a Chicago man filed a class-action lawsuit in Cook County claiming that Templeton Rye Spirits was “deceptively marketing” its whiskey as an Iowa product.
In fact, the spirit is largely distilled and aged at a plant owned by MGP Ingredients in Lawrenceburg, Ind., along with many other ryes on the market. A second class-action suit against Templeton was also filed in Cook County, and a third was filed in Polk County, Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register.
In addition to compensating customers, the Templeton whiskey label will now feature the words “Distilled in Indiana” on the back and remove the words “Small Batch” and “Prohibition Era Recipe” from the front.
According to the suit, plaintiff Christoper McNair, along with “thousands of consumers across the country … thought they were buying authentic Iowa whiskey and were unaware of the actual origin of its whiskey.”
McNair claimed in the suit he had bought more than a dozen bottles of Templeton Rye (at an approximate cost of $34.99 per bottle) since 2008 and “liked” the company on Facebook, all while believing the product was made in Iowa.
Bear in mind that this case took place in America – the top market for Irish whiskey sales.
Clearly, the Templeton case was different because it made false claims directly on the bottle – something that theoretically would not happen here, as was pointed out in an excellent post by whiskey bonder Louise McGuane. She details the scrutiny of her label by the controlling authority, the Health Service Executive, and how they made her change aspects of it. So labelling is being controlled – to a degree. But if the State was to start trying to sort out issues like deceptive marketing and false provenance, they would have some sizeable adversaries outside of whiskey – Tesco’s fake farms and the wild shenanigans of massive brewing firms (as exposed continuously by Jaq Steadman on her excellent Liquid Curiosity account) are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the recent shambles that is Origin Green showed the State has enough trouble just promoting food and drink.
Origin Green was a food sustainability programme that was run by Bord Bia, the national body responsible for promoting Irish food and drink at home and abroad. The idea was that firms would apply for Origin Green status on the basis of their ongoing endeavours in sustainability and ecologically sound practice. As recently as last September, Bord Bia announced that they were spending one million euros on promoting Origin Green. That money is, of course, funded by the taxpayer.
Within days of that announcement, three firms who were certified members of Origin Green were named by the Environmental Protection Agency as some of the worst polluters in the country. This in turn led the Irish Wildlife Trust to call Origin Green a sham, accusing it of ‘greenwashing’ for firms that are actively damaging our environment. It’s hard to ascertain just how stringent Bord Bia were when giving out the verification awards, but Hibernia Distillers – who, once again, do not own a distillery or warehouses – are among the firms who have Origin Green status.
You can read their entry here, but this is a key point:
All barley and corn used in the distilling process is 100% sourced in Ireland, with the whiskey produced in small batches.
Given that much of what they are selling was distilled in either Cooley or Bushmills between five and ten years ago – when their firm didn’t even exist – I find it highly unlikely that they could possibly claim that all of the grain used was Irish.
All of the corn used for grain spirit in Ireland has to come from other countries, as we do not have the climate here to grow it without incurring large costs. If the Hydes can show paperwork to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the grain spirit they are selling was made from 100% Irish-grown maize, then I would love to hear from them. Sadly it won’t be on Twitter, where they went from ignoring my questions for two years to actually just blocking me after my post went live in August.
Then there is their use of the term ‘small batch’ – malt whiskey is made in batches. It is, by its very nature, a batch process. However, I would find it hard to call the sizeable distilleries of Cooley or Bushmills ‘small batch’, for it is from one of those two that Hibernia Distillers get their malt whiskey.
As regards their single grain whiskey – grain spirit is made in a continuous process, which is why the still that makes it is known as a continuous still. If you care making grain spirit, you are making it non-stop in as large quantities as you can manage. Pot whiskey is batch, like a kettle, while grain is non stop, like a tap. So the grain whiskey Hyde are bottling and selling is not small, nor is it batch.
It’s also worth noting that their most recent release – which falsely lists Alan Hyde as master distiller – states that their single grain is triple distilled. All grain whiskey is distilled once, as the process is so efficient it doesn’t need more. You can argue that the compartments of a column still constitute three processes, but let’s face it, nobody does that, except the Hydes.
Meanwhile, under the ‘social responsibility’ section of their Origin Green profile, the Hydes list sponsorship of sports teams (they claim the Church Of Ireland hockey team is one of the best known sports clubs in Cork, which will be news to Cork City FC) and donations to charity. Sponsorship is marketing, while charitable donations are just PR masquerading under the flimsy banner of corporate social responsibility. Somehow, all of these things are listed as reasons why Hibernia Distillers deserve Origin Green certification. I put all of these points to Origin Green in an email on November 2nd last year, asking if they actually verified any of the claims in the profile, and this was their immediate response:
Hi Bill,
Thank you very much for your email and your interest in the programme. Please note that because all Origin Green plans are treated as confidential, we are not in a position to disclose any further information than what is publically available on our website. However, all Origin Green plans must achieve 3rd party verification before they’re accepted to the programme, and all targets are audited on an annual basis for their validity.
Thank you again and have a nice day.
Kind regards,
The Origin Green Team
One point I’d like to make to any communications people out there – nobody in Ireland says ‘have a nice day’ without it being a passive aggressive ‘fuck you’. It’s the equivalent of ‘have a great weekend’ or ‘enjoy your evening’ on Twitter – it means ‘don’t bother to contact me again’. So if you are starting out in your career of firefighting with journalists, don’t use ‘have a nice day’ to sign off on a request for information that you clearly do not want to share, as this sort of brush-off rarely works the way you hoped. Naturally, I set my jaw and responded:
Hi,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. While I appreciate confidentiality, I’d like to quote from the Bord Bia strategy statement document: “Transparency and safe supply chains are a critical component of the Origin Green ambition. Consumer trust in where their food comes from and how it is made is vital for manufacturers, retailers and, indeed, the reputation of Ireland’s food and drink industry. Producers recognise the priority that should be given to transparency throughout the supply chain – to form a chain of trust– starting at the source of the raw ingredient or farm of origin. Without safe and transparent supply chains, the vision for the Irish food and drink industry cannot be achieved.”
Client confidentiality is important – so is transparency. If the Hydes are allowed to use Origin Green as a platform to boost their brand and use it for corporate virtue signalling, I would suggest that it might be in the public interest for you to go back over their claims and see how much of it they can actually back up – especially the part about using 100% corn and barley from Ireland, which is audacious as they don’t have anything to do with actually making whiskey.
On a related note, I would very much appreciate it if you could furnish me with the official Bord Bia/Origin Green definition of ‘sourced in Ireland’ – does it mean grown here, or simply purchased here?
Finally – were the three firms named and shamed by the EPA stripped of their Origin Green status? Who audited them on their claims, and who verified their status?
Many thanks,
Bill
Granted, the last part was just a giddy snarl, but it is all part of the bigger problem – offering this rubber stamp from the State to firms that they don’t seem to scrutinise all that well.
A week later, I hadn’t heard a peep. So I emailed again:
Hi there,
Concerned that you might have forgotten to reply to me – my questions still stand: Do you stand over the facts as stated on the Hibernia Distillers Origin Green website page; do you have an official definition of the word ‘sourced’ as used by Bord Bia/Origin Green; and what was the outcome for the three Origin Green-certified firms named and shamed by the EPA?
Regards,
Bill
This is the point where a badger has latched on to your leg and you are desperately searching for a twig to snap so he lets go. They answered, with a rather more pleasant tone than the ‘thanks for the email and have a nice day’ opener.
Hi Bill,
Apologies for the delay, just to inform you I am following up with this. I’m just gathering the information needed and will be back to you in due course.
Kind regards,
Anna
That was the tenth of November. Cue silence. On November 25th I emailed again:
Hi,
Any updates on this situation?
Regards,
Bill
Then on November 30th I got this:
Hi Bill,
I hope you are well.
Sincerest apologies in the delay in getting back to you – we are just waiting for input from a colleague ad will get back to you as soon as possible.
Kind Regards,
Katie
Katie is an assistant brand manager with Origin Green. So there was a faint hope some clarity might be coming. On December 5th, I got this:
Dear Bill,
Sincere apologies for the delay in getting back to you and thank you for taking the time to enquire about the Origin Green Programme.
we can confirm that their sustainability commitments are a summary of their sustainability plan, that was independently verified by SGS http://www.sgs.ie/
Regarding your query looking for an official definition of the word ‘sourced’ as used by Bord Bia/Origin Green:
Sourced in relation to Origin Green can be sourced from Ireland i.e. produced in Ireland or sourced from outside i.e. produced outside the country. Companies are eligible to join Origin Green as follows:
‘Origin Green is a sustainability development programme that encompasses the Irish food supply chain and all associated activities from farming to food processing. Where ingredients are sourced from outside the Irish supply chain the food processing undertaken in Ireland must represent a significant element of the total manufacturing footprint. Where seafood is exported without further processing the producers involved are required to be members of a recognised Quality Assurance programme and which incorporates a sustainability element.’
Regarding your question asking about the outcome for the three Origin Green-certified firms named and shamed by the EPA:
We are investigating the issues with the Origin Green companies on the EPA’s priority list and will be progressing these on an individual company basis. We have an ongoing working relationship with the EPA.
All companies are third party verified to Origin Green by SGS.
Exactly as you would expect, almost no clarity. ‘Third-party verified’ means ‘we wash our hands of these claims’. Yet they are the ones pushing these firms. So naturally there was another email from me to them on December 8:
Hi,
Thanks for the reply – as a follow-up question, what is the Bord Bia/Origin Green definition of ‘produced’? Does it mean actually made or grown in Ireland? Or is it more about processing and packaging here? I’ve checked with a few brewers, distillers and grain farmers here, and they all say that no maize grown in Ireland is used for distilling – so despite the Hibernia Distillers claim that all the grain used in the whiskey they sell being sourced in Ireland, it seems utterly impossible that the maize used in their single grain was grown here. That’s something you might want to check more thoroughly with SGS.
As for Hibernia Distillers and their wild claims, if you are happy to stand over their statement, I assume it is because SGS have backed it. However, it is basically a press release that deserves far greater scrutiny that SGS seem to have given it – even just the claim about CoI HC being one of the best known sports clubs in Cork is absolute nonsense. Perhaps going forward you should let firms stick to their green credentials and not use Origin Green as a platform for shameless self-promotion that has little to do with the environment.
I’m glad to hear about your working relationship with the EPA, and look forward to hearing the outcome of your enquiry.
On a personal note, I am saddened to see that the information you have provided me with took a month to send through. None of it is revelatory, and I see no reason why you couldn’t have just sent it in reply to my initial email.
Regards,
Bill
Finally, on December 11, they sent me this:
Hi Bill,
Thanks for your follow-up query. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay in responding to your previous query.
With regards to the word ‘produced’, this would refer to products that are made or grown in Ireland. In some instances, materials or ingredients will be procured which may make up a product that is still produced here. From an Origin Green perspective, we strongly encourage local sourcing wherever possible but in all cases, the aim is to implement robust sustainable sourcing credentials.
We cannot comment on individual cases with our verified members but please note that all companies are audited by SGS against the targets and claims in sustainability plans on an annual basis. This occurs from January to March each year. For companies that became verified members in 2017, they will go through their first annual review in Q1 2018. If a member fails to submit the Origin Green annual review, membership may be suspended. Also, if a member is found to have made claims that cannot be verified or not made sufficient progress against set targets, SGS may outline a clear action plan to be enacted by the company or recommend suspension of membership.
Kind regards,
The Origin Green Team.
These are the people who are in charge of marketing our food and drink overseas. It took them a month to provide me with very simple, utterly useless information. So while they piss away a million euro of your money promoting ‘green’ firms like the ones the EPA condemned as some of the worst polluters in the country, the team at Origin Green seem incapable of simply answering a basic question about one of the brands they have given their blessing to.
As for the firms named and shamed by the EPA, one of those firms was Carbery, who made the EPA watchlist in both 2017 and 2011. It would appear that Origin Green and its parent body, Bord Bia, have an even healthier relationship with Carbery than the one they claim to have with the EPA – a relationship that is about to get a lot stronger:
It’s also worth noting that the Minister for Agriculture who made this promotion, Michael Creed TD, is based in the Cork North West constituency – which is also home to Ballineen, where Carbery are based.
Sinead Treanor, sustainability manager, Carbery Group, Ballineen, with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, and Dan McSweeney, CEO of the Carbery Group and now head of Bord Bia.
Announcing the appointment of Mr MacSweeney – who recently retired as head of Carbery – the Minister said this: “I am delighted to appoint Dan MacSweeney to the post of Chair of An Bord Bia. Dan is an outstanding individual, with a wealth of knowledge and experience of the Irish agri-food sector. Dan’s reputation for developing a successful international agri-food business, while placing the primary producer at the heart of the business model is widely recognised. I am confident that he will provide innovative strategic leadership and direction to Bord Bia”.
Of the outgoing chair of Bord Bia, Michael Carey, Minister Creed said: “I wish to place on the record my deep appreciation of Michael Carey’s commitment in chairing Bord Bia over the last number of year. His business experience, effective chairing of the Board and work with the organisation particularly in relation to the sustainability agenda and Origin Green has delivered tangible results”.
The bold emphasis was by me, a shorthand way of seeing ‘are you fucking seeing this too?’ The CEO of a firm that was named by the Environmental Protection Agency as one of the worst polluters in the country has now been made head of the Irish Food Board, which also includes Origin Green, which promotes sustainability.
So this is food promotion, food marketing, and food production in Ireland in 2018. This is the time for all Irish whiskey fans to ask: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – who will guard the guards themselves? Who is going to protect consumers? Because as we learned in the global economic crash of 2008, industry does not self regulate, especially not here on a small island where everyone knows everyone else. There is no invisible hand of the market guiding best practice – there is only human weakness and human greed. Libertarianism is a capitalist wet dream, and unless the whiskey community gets vocal on issues like basic honesty, renegade brands will hobble our resurgence. There is a vast difference between someone like Bernard Walsh, who has always been open about sourcing whiskey and has built a distillery through hard work and honesty, and this new breed of brand that has crashed into the market here.
Consider the Dublin Whiskey Distillery Company, whose CEO Lorcan Rossi told the Independent that you didn’t need a distillery to make great whiskey. Of course, he is right – there is distilling by contract – but one would hope that if he isn’t going to open a distillery, that he will remove the word distillery from the company title, and the bottle. We might be a while waiting for that however, as their new whiskey has hit the market, emblazoned with the tagline Dublin’s Own.
The defence among these brands is ‘’we never said we had a distillery’. But how is any consumer, here or – more importantly – in the States, meant to know that there is no such place as the DWD, that this spirit is not from Dublin? If you are using words like ‘crafted’ and anchoring your brand in a location other than where it was distilled and aged, then you are misleading consumers. Is it any wonder that this sort of thing happens?:
Absent from the tweet is the fact that they don’t actually have a distillery. Read the about section on their website and note a slight deja vu as they talk at length about purity of water and family tradition of pub ownership.
Nowhere does it say ‘we source our whiskey from the finest distilleries in the land and cut our whiskey to measure here in Wicklow’. Would you enjoy the whiskey less if it did? I wouldn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t write off Barr An Uisce like I do if they offered a little more clarity on what they actually are.
But this isn’t just about protecting consumers who may not be privy to insider information about how Irish whiskey works – this is about the industry itself. Few in the IWA want to openly start a war with each other, but they are ultimately fighting for the same market. Beyond the big five – IDL/Pernod Ricard, Beam Suntory in Cooley, Brown Forman in Slane, Jose Cuervo in Bushmills and the biggest distiller in the world, Diageo, in Roes of James’s Gate – there will not be much room for the smaller distillers, and they need to be aware that brands which endeavour to create the illusion that they have a distillery pose a threat to their business. Even the guardians of the category for the past 40 years are starting to take note.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, IDL CEO Jean Christophe Couture made the point that there is nothing wrong with creating a brand out of nothing – but misleading the public is unacceptable.
"There is nothing wrong creating a whiskey which has no history. Important that we don't invent stories or mislead customers IDL Chief Ex. pic.twitter.com/pTMiOOVkAw
But long before this, one of the smallest, most grassroots distilling firms in Ireland was making the same point. Eighteen months ago, journalist, author and distiller Peter Mulryan wrote a blog post on his frustration at being forced to compete with brands that create nothing except fanciful narratives. As Mulryan said at the end of his post, “So the question is this. As an industry what are we saying to the world? 1. Our spirits in Ireland are awesome, you just have to try them! Or 2. We’ll invent whatever shit we can get away with, stick it on a bottle and hope you are dumb enough not to ask awkward questions.”
This is the point where we all need to start asking those awkward questions. Jak Steadman asks those awkwards questions, Leslie Williams asks those awkward questions, Louise McGuane asks those awkward questions, and, whether you love him or loathe him, Mark Reynier asks those awkward questions. Brands that mislead are the enemy within, and the growing chorus of whiskey lovers who are willing to say this is not good enough are the only ones who can bring accountability to the sector. Whiskey bloggers, possibly the biggest nerds in the food and drink world, need to be that child who shamed the emperor, need to be able to use their knowledge and their voice to shout ‘fuck this’ when it is needed.
One of the the most surprising things to come from the Hyde post was the realisation that there is a whiskey community beyond Twitter. The analytics show that most of the push to the post came from Facebook and – oddly – LinkedIn, but there were people who contacted me via email just to share their thoughts on it. Not all of us agreed on everything, but in general it was great to hear from fans who had huge passion for whiskey.
One whiskey lover who contacted me even went so far as to rewrite the Scotch whisky regulations on marketing: Explaining his methodology, he wrote; “The main change was to put the technical file rules into it (much of the technical file is just descriptive in my view). I think it is now much better; it is jokey but effective to dress it up as a future statutory instrument. This is simply a rewrite of the Scottish Regs. It undoubtedly needs more work and may contain errors but can be a source of debate. The underlined parts clearly need change to Irish law.
“I had another look at the geographical point and I would argue that you should not put the locality before the category; e.g. a ban on “Kerry Single Malt Irish Whiskey” unless the whiskey was made in Kerry. This is what the Scottish rules say and I think this goes to the heart of the Hyde/West Cork thing and the place-marketing issue generally. I find it difficult to see how it can be any other way, otherwise opening distilleries is disincentivised.”
That is at the crux of this issue – why would anyone want to open a distillery when you can just pretend to open one? Why have a warehouse when you can pretend to have one? Why create when you can just relabel?
There is another issue, beyond all the shenanigans of the brands: Sameness. In an excellent piece in the Irish Independent, Dingle’s head distiller Michael Walsh made this point about a huge amount of brands coming from a small few sources: “People looking to explore Irish whiskey are being greeted with a vast array of new whiskeys under different labels professing to have something ‘unique’ contained within, when in reality it is anything but. You could find largely the same whiskey in any number of different bottlings, which could lead to potential customers getting a very narrow view of Irish whiskey – or simply a distrust of the product, which could turn people away before all the genuinely unique whiskeys come along from the new wave of distilleries. I don’t have a problem with independent bottles, as long as it clearly indicates that this is the case.”
Look at all the independent bottlers we have here – how many of them make it clear that this is what they are, right there on the label? I can’t understand why no-one has done it – look at the great Scotch bottling firms, there is a golden opportunity here for someone to do the same, and now is the time to get started when there are deals on casks with up and coming distilleries. Surely there is a gap in the market for a quality bottler, blithering on about how they traveled the land like a modern-day Barnard, sourcing only the finest casks of whiskey, how the distillers don’t want anyone to know where they got it from as it was some of their best stuff, throw in a few pictures of yourself copper dogging in a dimly lit warehouse or sniffing a bunghole, and away you go – you are an indie bottler.
Here, however, the norm seems to be pretending you made the stuff you are selling. How did we get to this point? And how do you think we look to the rest of the world? I met a brand rep recently who told me of the gentle ribbing he had been getting for years at whisky fairs overseas, as the Scotch brand ambassadors make jokes about the Irish pretending to have distilleries. Good natured as it was, it shows there is a problem, and while the Hyde post may have forced some of us to confront the issue, it hasn’t gone away.
This is the new whiskey from the Dead Rabbit, a pub in New York:
Here it is.
Distilled in Ireland. Aged in seasoned bourbon casks. Finished in first-fill American oak barrels. 100% Irish. With a hint of an American accent. The Dead Rabbit Irish Whiskey, launching February 12th 2018. pic.twitter.com/MaBZQzjaQr
On the label is the name of the Dublin Liberties Distillery, which is currently being built and is due for completion later this year. A valid question would be – why is there the name of an unfinished distillery on the label? Clearly this isn’t where the spirit was distilled, so why is it there? It is there to give the whiskey legitimacy.
Due to non-disclosure agreements they cannot legally tell you where the whiskey was sourced, same as any other brand, so they are instead using the name of a distillery that is owned by the firm behind the release – Quintessential Brands. An average consumer – especially one overseas – is going to look at that and make the assumption that Dublin Liberties Distillery is where it comes from. There is literally no other reason for that distillery to have its name on that bottle. It is there to mislead.
You can say – most people won’t care, they will drink this as it has the Dead Rabbit aura, after all, it is the world’s best pub. As a counterpoint to any ‘world’s best’ awards, I’d like to point out that Spike Island in Cork Harbour was recently voted the second greatest tourist attraction in the world – just behind Machu Picchu, and ahead of the Great Wall of China. Yes, the actual Great Wall of China is not as good as an island with a fort on it in Cork harbour. But while I may see ‘world’s best bar’ as a meaningless accolade, it will be enough for this whiskey to fly off the shelves, and help continue the grand tradition of Irish whiskey brands that mislead.
When I posted the Hyde piece, my wife wearily asked if this meant I had got it out of my system. She had to listen to me banging on about this transparency issue for two years, and didn’t want to hear the name Hyde again. Neither did I, to be honest. For their part, the Hydes have pivoted to being whiskey bonders, which at least is based in fact. I do feel sorry for them, as I think they simply failed to grasp where the lines were drawn for whiskey brands who source. In fact, the most common complaint I received over the last six months was ‘why just Hyde? Why not all the other brands doing the same thing?’ The simple answer is that most brands aren’t so blatant about it. Also, most brands don’t plagiarise vast chunks of copy for their site.
And, as if the Hydes weren’t already on enough of a downer, the influencer who helped give exposure to their brand – DJ, actor and prominent Scientologist Danny Masterson, who played Steven Hyde in That ‘70s Show – has had something of a fall from grace.
I’d like to point out that the whiskey the Hydes sell is not at fault here. I personally feel it is overpriced, especially when you consider that the sourced ten year old malts from West Cork Distillers are an incredibly reasonable 40 euro, but that isn’t to say that Hydes’ releases are poor, nor are any of the other sourced whiskeys on the market, it’s just the message that left a bad taste.
I’d love to say this is my last post on transparency in Irish whiskey, but the Dead Rabbit brand shows that this problem is not going away. We have everything to play for, but it will be a sad day for whiskey lovers everywhere if the second coming of Irish whiskey comes undone because people who know and love whiskey stayed silent while brands ran riot.
Not far from where I live is a little village named Ardmore. Just over the county line (and the River Blackwater), it is a pretty little spot, once dependant on fishing but now surviving well on reeling in the tourists instead. It’s home to the Cliff House Hotel, which has one of the better whiskey bars in the region, and it is also a popular spot for dives, with numerous wrecks just off the coast, including the HMS Scotland, which sank in 1875.
Scotland – the country, not the wreck – has its own Ardmore, one that is arguably more famous than the one in Waterford or any of the Ardmores scattered across the island of Ireland. Ardmore Distillery in Aberdeenshire was founded by the Teacher family to create malt for their blend, and it remains a primary component of Teacher’s. Their own bottlings include some TR NAS releases, and a recent 20-year-old that received a positive review on Malt, which pointed out that the 75 euro price tag made the release an excellent bang-for-your-buck whisky. By the time I clicked on to Master Of Malt to buy one, it had jumped up to 120 (as of now, it is back down to 75). So I had a rummage and found a Douglas Laing-bottled 21 year old from the same distillery for an equally reasonable 88 euro and bought that.
Ardmore means the same thing in Scots and Irish gaelic – great height. The links between our languages are a reminder of how much our countries have in common, culturally and historically. Obviously, when it comes to our beloved spirit drink, there are a couple of differences.
The much-touted renaissance of Irish whiskey has seen us rocket to an impressive 100 million bottles sold in 2016. For an industry that was in ribbons in the 1980s, this is like Lazarus rising and then winning a series of ultramarathons. However, we need perspective: In the first six months of 2017, Scotland exported 528 million bottles of Scotch, more than five times what we sold in all of the previous year. Yet Scotland’s staggering figure is a fall of 2.2% from the previous year. They are the whisky rulers of the planet, whether we like to admit it or not. So the question is, do we work to stand apart from them, or do we align?
When I spoke to Elliot Hughes and Peter Mosley from Dingle Distillery last summer, the subject of Irish food promotion came up. They talked about focus groups where brands were encouraged to separate themselves from the big success stories, and talk up how they were better than the best. The Dingle guys couldn’t see the sense of this, pointing out how ludicrous it was to be trying to lure consumers away from the big brands by claiming you are better on the basis of elements as random as the ‘air and water’ where your product is made.
Elliot made the point that you should let the big brands do the heavy lifting, then pitch yourself as similar, but separate. Think of it as – you’ve tried Guinness, Wrasslers is like that, why not give it a go? You don’t alienate consumers by telling them you are better than what they are drinking, you just say – have a sip of this and see what you think. I feel the same about whiskey. The Scots have inroads to markets, but more importantly they have inroads to hearts and minds. Theirs is a magical aura – of class, sophistication, quality. They also have an array of whiskies and distilleries that we could spend a century catching up to. So why not ride their coattails, rather than trying to row back decades of cultural osmosis? Why not say ‘Scotch whisky is a wonder, but Irish is too – and we aren’t all that different’? In short, why not just go ahead and drop the E?
In almost every Whiskey 101/Introduction to Whiskey article you read in the mainstream press, one of the most tedious and boring points is about how Irish whiskey is spelled with an E and Scottish whisky is not. It rarely goes into the subject deeper than that, mainly because the explanation is not very exciting – Dublin distillers wanted the world to know that their great whiskey was much better than that made by country distillers, so they shoved an E into the world to mark out how different they were. Or, Irish distillers wanted to differentiate themselves from Scottish blends, so they shoved in an E. Whoever started it, it all went a bit like Dr Seuss’s Sneetches On Beaches, where star belly sneetches get their stars put on and taken off as the unstarred ones do the same to fit in. So we were left with Irish whiskey, another construct of the Sylvester McMonkey McBean School of Marketing, where different and better are interchangeable terms.
I’m not saying that I want it taken off any of the brands already in existence, but for me, if I was a new distillery or indie bottler looking to make inroads into kingmaker markets like the US, or Asia, then I would have no problem with selling my brand as a boutique single malt Irish whisky. I wouldn’t stick a load of tartan on the label, or bagpipes, or anything to make it less Irish, but I would not bother with the E. Curiously, I would be fully entitled to do it.
In October 2014 the Irish Whiskey Technical File was published. It lays the groundwork for what will become the rules guiding Irish whiskey. There is an excellent study of it by David Havelin of LiquidIrish (and an excellent correspondence with Bushmills on use of ‘whiskies’ in one of their campaigns), but right in the title of the technical file one thing stands out – a dual spelling. It can be Irish whisky or Irish whiskey. So there it was, right on the front page. It was only a matter of time until someone chose to drop the E, but it seems fitting that whiskey-historian-turned-whiskey-distiller Peter Mulryan was the first. It also seems fitting that Déise-based terroirist Mark Reynier was the second. That both are distilling in Waterford is just coincidence, but in a few years time, Waterford whisky is going to be a thing. Both are outspoken mavericks, so it makes sense that they would grab the chance to be different, although this quote from Reynier resonates with me: “I loathe whisk(e)y. That PC catch-all spelling beloved of publishers and bloggers the world over – neither wishing to offend, nor prepared to make a decision, they use the tentative bracket to give us the worst of both worlds, like a unisex lavatory.”
We’ve just updated our twitter handle – so if you’re in dialogue with our old one, we’re not ignoring you…
There is an argument that the E is central to the identity of Irish whiskey. Marketing, it seems, is the key. The idea is that dropping the E would confuse consumers; that we are better standing apart from Scotland, and that the E does that. My point would be – do we want to stand apart? Do we not want to be seen in a similar light across the pond? The bigger question is one of category awareness, but also geographical and historical – how many consumers in the States see Ireland and Scotland and completely separate entities? Look at the Paddy’s Day photos from the States – bagpipes, kilts, tartan. Granted the Boston Irish might know what’s what, but do the vast bulk of consumers that we want to target know – or even care – that we are separate countries? Do we want to be the guys correcting them and saying ‘well actually that is completely separate from us’?
Beyond that, ask them what a single malt is, and they will probably tell you ‘Scotch’. Scotch whisky is embedded as the single malt in the hearts and minds of whisky drinkers over there, so shape-shifting a little and using that as an access point seems, to me, like a good idea. Do we want to stand so far apart from the gold standard for potable spirits? And does this one little letter really achieve that aim? I would like to see the category move beyond an ‘us versus them’ mindset to a ‘us and them’ one. I made this point a couple of years ago, saying maybe it is time to move beyond nation and see the Scots as our celtic family, as Canadian and Japanese whisky starts to take over. While I love the ‘you’ll never beat the Irish’ mindset, I certainly don’t want to see us setting ourselves up for a fall – and over-the-top sound bites aren’t going to help us be taken seriously on the world stage, especially in regards to whiskey tourism.
Joe Brandie had an ironic name, given his status as a whisky legend. As owner of The Fiddichside Inn in Speyside, Scotland’s distilling heartland, Brandie – who passed away late last year – became a well-known face among whisky tourists in the region, who would pop into his pub in between distillery trips. The Fiddichside was part of a disappearing world – there was no music, no TV, and no food. There was a big, open fire, a good whisky selection, and a warm welcome from Brandie, ever present behind the counter, unless there was a funeral nearby and he had to shut up shop for an hour.
Brandie’s passing is a reminder of the rich whisky heritage in Scotland – a heritage that dwarfs our own. Obviously, things are picking up here, but for the Irish Whiskey Association to declare that we will be the world’s number one whiskey tourist draw by 2025 is somewhat ambitious. Whiskey tourism is a very specific thing – it isn’t someone on holidays here visiting a distillery, it is someone coming here to visit a distillery. Whiskey tourists are going to be vital for remote rural distilleries, of which there are now many here, but in order for that to happen, those distilleries need to build up a following. They do this by bringing their own product to market, and for it to be a hit, even in cult terms. Then the fans will want to come visit the distillery, see the warehouses, picking up the distillery-only bottlings and spend time in the area before moving on to another distillery. While whisky tourism in Scotland only really took off in the 1990s, the distilleries involved had decades if not centuries of unbroken history – and decades old stock.
A busload of Americans at a loose end in Dublin doing the Jameson tour, or the Teeling one, or the Pearse Lyons one, is not whiskey tourism. A group of whiskey geeks coming here, hiring a car and travelling around Ireland, visiting every distillery they can find along the way – that is whiskey tourism.
— Irish Whiskey Association (@IrishWhiskeyAsc) June 12, 2017
Consider the above. Clonakilty in west Cork is a great town with massive tourism offerings – year-round festivals, and an abundance of attractions nearby. But for an unbuilt distillery to claim it will draw more than forty thousand people per annum to the town is at best ambitious. It’s not a claim that they will have 40,000 visitors – it is that they will bring that number of visitors to the town.
To give it some context: Talisker distillery on the Isle of Skye has 50,000 visitors per year. Talisker has been in existence for two centuries, and has its entry level ten year old single malt on every shelf in every Tesco store in Ireland. It is an iconic Scotch, which goes a long way towards explaining why Talisker welcomes almost a thousand tourists a week. I asked Michael Scully, the man behind Clonakilty Distillery, where he got his figures from. He said the numbers are projected to five to ten years after the distillery is built, and are based on what he claimed was a similar attraction, the Clonakilty Model Railway, which has 40,000 visitors per year.
I’ve been to the model railway, and it is great fun for all the family. I bought my wife and kids there, and the venue is also used to host kids parties. It’s a nice day out. If I suggested to my wife that we load the kids into the car and go visit a distillery, she would rightly tell me to fuck off. A distillery may draw people with an interest in food and drink, in chemistry, in history, but you are not going to convince kids that a distillery is a place worth visiting. Trust me, I’ve tried. So if you consider who in your family would like to visit a distillery, and who would like to visit a cool little railway town that makes kids feel like giants, then work out how many of the 40,000 would actually go to Clon to visit a distillery. I reckon it’d be generous to say between 15,000 and 20,000 is a more reasonable number.
You can say, well the 40,000 figure is hypothetical, but it was being used as leverage as the distillery sought planning and funding. If Clon distillery draws 40,000 visitors per annum in twenty years, I will be impressed. But for now we need to keep our feet on the ground and accept that our Irish charm and wit isn’t going to hand us success on a plate. Where is our Talisker? Our Macallan? Our Ardbeg? You don’t become a whiskey legend overnight, and this isn’t the Field Of Dreams – you build it, you make a great product, and if you’re lucky, they will come at some point in the distant future.
Similarly, we don’t have a Feis Ile, a Spirit Of Speyside, or any festival where we can celebrate a rich heritage of classic distilleries. We have so much to offer any tourist here, but large numbers of mature distilleries is not one of them. In a few years Dublin will have many distilleries you can visit – but Dublin doesn’t need tourists; places like Waterford, Clare, west Cork, Connaught, Donegal need them – to rural outposts, tourism is a lifeline and the difference between failure and success. I am as optimistic as the next person, but we need to talk in real stats, real plans, real distilleries, and real whiskey tourism.
Irish whiskey distilleries attracted 814,000 visitors in 2017, an 11% increase on 2016! – “Continued double-digit growth proves that Irish whiskey tourism is a hot trend right now and an increasingly important part of Ireland’s tourism offer" @LavelleAbfi https://t.co/QC0sDvsVVP
— Irish Whiskey Association (@IrishWhiskeyAsc) January 8, 2018
I'd never claim the math ability of Euclid but if the number of distilleries increases by 20% (10 to 12), while visitor numbers only increase 11%, doesn't that indicate a fall in average distillery visitors, 73300 for 10 down to 67833 for 12 (-7.5%)? https://t.co/LyUPouxYNmpic.twitter.com/8h911tMyRj
Scotch has beaten us repeatedly over the last 100 years, and will continue to do so for some time, both in sales, in tourism, and – crucially – in reputation. If we are going to earn the respect of the spirit world, we will need to be realistic in our approach, and walk the walk before we talk the talk. Joe Brandie could have told us how much hard work it takes to become an icon – in the 57 years he ran the Fiddichside Inn, he only ever took four days off, and that was to mourn the passing of his wife. Brandie’s passing is a lesson in the difference between being a legend and being a myth – everything is about time, hard work and patience, and a lot less about how you spell the word whiskey. That said, if you’re thinking about starting a distillery in Ardmore in County Waterford, you might want to keep that E right where it is.
NO REPRO FEE 12/01/2018 Kilkenny Whiskey Guild. Pictured at a Kilkenny Whiskey Guild (KWG) tasting event are (l to r) Eddie Langton, KWG and Langton’s Hotel; Cyril Briscoe, KWG; Paddy Purser, Forestry Consultant; Dave McCabe, Midleton Blender; Ger Buckley, Midleton Master Cooper; Jim Rafferty, KWG and The Dylan Whisky Bar; Kevin O’Gorman, Midleton Master of Maturation; and Patrick Blunden, Castle Blunden, in celebration of Irish Distillers next chapter in its Virgin Irish Oak Collection of Single Pot Still Irish Whiskeys; Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest edition. This exceptional offering has been finished in barrels made from Irish oak grown in the Bluebell Forest of Castle Blunden Estate in County Kilkenny. Photograph: Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland
Agmondesham Cuffe was quite the operator. As detailed in Turtle Bunbury’s excellent work on the Irish aristocracy, Cuffe knew which way the wind blew. Cuffe disliked the policies of James II, who had plans to make Ireland a Catholic stronghold, as per the plans of the Catholic Earl of Tyrconnell, who wanted to strip the Cromwellian planters of their lands. James II did not take well to Cuffe’s attitude, and stripped him of his lands and titles, which included that of Mayor Of Kilkenny. But Cuffe did not have to wait long for his revenge – along came King Billy, ousting James II and restoring Cuffe to his land at Castleinch as thanks for helping to secure the Protestant succession. Cuffe became MP for Kilkenny in 1695, in an election that saw him cheat his way to a win. Whilst in this parliament, Cuffe played a blinder – as Bunbury puts it: Among the acts Agmondesham would have voted on were those forbidding Catholics from sending their children abroad for education, from owning arms or horses valued at more than £5 and from becoming solicitors. During this time his young son Joseph attended Trinity College Dublin. One wonders how often father and son met and walked together upon the muddy streets of the medieval stronghold that would one day become the second city of the British Empire.
This post isn’t about Cuffe’s sons, but rather his daughter Martha. She married the MP John Blunden, and their son became Sir John Blunden, First Baronet of Castle Blunden in Kilkenny. And this leads me, as almost everything does, to whiskey.
The Dair Ghaelach series of whiskeys from Midleton are excellent – innovative in their use of virgin Irish oak, with true depth and flavour that – even for a notorious cheapskate like me – justifies their price, somewhere in the region of 200 smackers. The initial release came from Grinsell’s Wood; here is some sweet delicious press release from three years ago that explains the background:
Midleton Dair Ghaelach, meaning ‘Irish oak’, is the result of a six-year exploration by the Midleton Masters into using native oak to mature Irish whiskey. Led by Master Blender, Billy Leighton, and Kevin O’Gorman, Master of Maturation, the project had two prerequisites. The first, was to ensure that all Irish oak was sourced exclusively from sustainable Irish Oak forests that could guarantee both a long-term supply and the re-generation of native wood, while the second was to explore what new taste profiles could be created from Irish oak maturation to craft a new and outstanding Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey.
In collaboration with professional Irish forestry consultants, O’Gorman and Leighton selected Grinsell’s Wood within the Ballaghtobin Estate, Co. Kilkenny, to provide the oak for the first in a series of virgin oak releases in the coming years. Each bottle can be traced back to one of nine 130-year-old Irish oak trees in Grinsell’s Wood, which were felled in April 2012.
To craft the oak into barrels, fellow artisans at the Maderbar sawmills in Baralla, north-west Spain, used the quarter-sawing process to cut the trees into staves under the watchful eye of the Midleton Masters. The staves were then transferred to the Antonio Páez Lobato cooperage in Jerez, where after drying for fifteen month the staves were worked into 48 Irish Oak Hogshead casks and given a medium toast.
At Midleton, a selection of traditional Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey distillates, matured for between 15 and 22 years in ex-Bourbon casks, were married together before being filled into the Irish oak Hogsheads. Leighton and O’Gorman nosed and tasted the whiskey each month and after almost one year, judged it to be beautifully balanced with just the perfect contribution of Irish oak.
Analysis shows that the Irish oak contains higher levels of some lignin derivative compounds, such as vanillin and vanillic acid, and furfural, in comparison to American and Spanish oak. These compounds further enhance the whiskey with vanilla, caramel and chocolate flavours, which are detectable on the nose of Midleton Dair Ghaelach and perfectly balance the classically rich, spicy Single Pot Still taste profile.
I don’t really care about the science behind it, but I loved this whiskey when I had it. According to those who have tried a few of them, they differ from tree to tree, which in its own way is another example of terroir.
So the first experiment was a success, commercially and otherwise, and now we have another batch of Irish oak whiskeys, this time aged in casks made from the trees of Bluebell Forest on the Blunden estate. I was invited to the launch, presumably by accident as I am the Jar Jar Binks of Irish whiskey. I couldn’t go anyway, but thankfully there were the photos above and the press release below:
Irish Distillers has unveiled the next chapter in its Virgin Irish Oak Collection of Single Pot Still Irish Whiskeys; Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest edition. This exceptional offering has been finished in barrels made from Irish oak grown in the Bluebell Forest of Castle Blunden Estate in County Kilkenny, imparting a true and unique flavour of Ireland.
Dair Ghaelach, which is Gaelic for ‘Irish oak’, is the result of an eight-year exploration by the expert production team at the Midleton Distillery, County Cork, into using native oak to mature Irish whiskey and follows the release of Midleton Dair Ghaelach Grinsell’s Wood in February 2015.
In collaboration with expert forestry consultant, Paddy Purser, the Irish Distillers team of Kevin O’Gorman, Head of Maturation, and Billy Leighton, Head Blender, chose Bluebell Forest on Castle Blunden Estate to provide the oak for the second edition in the Midleton Dair Ghaelach series. Each bottle can be traced back to one of six individual 130-year-old oak trees that were carefully felled in the Bluebell Forest in May of 2013.
Kevin O’Gorman, Head of Maturation at Midleton Distillery, comments: “It is a joy to be able to showcase more of our experimentation with maturation in Irish oak through the release of Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest. The naturally sweet compounds found in Irish oak work in perfect harmony with this whiskey to deliver milk chocolate and honeycomb on the nose, a beautifully round and silky-smooth mouth feel and a long, pot still finish.
“The nuances in flavour in the two editions of Midleton Dair Ghaelach come from our native wood, and offer whiskey fans a true flavour of Ireland – the range has provenance unlike any Irish whiskey before it and we look forward to exploring more of Ireland’s woodlands further in the years to come.”
Bluebell Forest is found among the historic stone walls of Castle Blunden Estate in County Kilkenny. Since the 1600s, generations of the Blunden Family have watched over a stand of Irish oak trees with a carpet of luminescent bluebells covering the forest floor. The carefully felled oak from these woods imparts its character and nuances into Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest to create an intrinsically Irish whiskey with historical provenance, traceability and a clear link to the sustainability and rejuvenation of Irish oak.
To craft the oak into barrels, fellow artisans at the Maderbar sawmills in Baralla, north-west Spain, used the quarter-sawing process to cut the trees into staves, which were then transferred to the Antonio Páez Lobato cooperage in Jerez. After drying for 15 months, the staves were worked into 29 Irish oak Hogshead casks and given a light toast.
The whiskey, made up of a selection of Midleton’s classic rich and spicy pot still distillates matured for between 12 and 23 years in American oak barrels, was then filled into the Irish oak Hogshead casks and diligently nosed and tasted each month by Leighton and O’Gorman. After a year and a half, the pair judged that the whiskey had reached the perfect balance between the spicy single pot still Irish whiskey and Irish oak characteristics.
Bottled at cask strength, between 55.30% to 56.30% ABV, and without the use of chill filtration, Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest is available from November 2017 in markets, including the US, Canada, Ireland, France and the UK at the recommended selling price of €280 per 70cl.
Here are the official Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest tasting notes:
Nose: Rich pot still spices are elevated by the clipped tannins of the toasted Irish oak. Fresh woodland character mingles with faint vanilla, giving the succulence of zesty pink grapefruit and pineapple along with ripe berries and green banana. The Irish oak influence imparts milk chocolate and honeycomb sweetness
Taste: Beautifully round and silky smooth with naturally sweet compounds from the Irish oak in harmony with the pot still spices. A touch of mango and kiwi bring some fruit undertones as the prickle of clove and cinnamon add their voice
Finish: Exceptionally long with soft sweet spices finally giving way to the proud Irish oak
Nothing tastes quite like proud wood.
The ability to create the Dair Ghaelach series came from the Irish Whiskey Technical File, which, unlike the rules guiding scotch, allowed for casks made from woods other than oak. To quote: Irish whiskey shall be subject to the maturation of the final distillate for at least three years in wooden casks, such as oak, not exceeding 700 litres capacity. This allows IDL to use virgin Irish oak, or whatever they want. It is an edge over our cousins across the sea, and allows for some interesting innovation.
One piece of wording in the technical file, however, is somewhat regressive. I noticed it first on the Irish Distillers pot still website:
Then Googled it:
Then I realised where it’s actually in the technical file.
Whatever I can say about our country’s relationship with the British Empire, using a landlord/tenant analogy is not it. I understand that this is a policy document, and needs to avoid incendiary language, but whitewashing the past is not helping the present troubles in the UK, where the Brexit omnishambles shows there is a certain amount of confusion over there about their relationship with us.
I don’t get stirred up by much, but let’s not pretend that we were somehow paying rent to a benevolent and kindly ruler for eight centuries. You don’t have to dig very far into the history of the great houses of Ireland to find that beneath many of the foundations lie the bones of our ancestors; the Blunden link back to Agmondesham Cuffe is as good an example of this as any. So perhaps ‘landlord’ could simply have been replaced with something equally beige but a little more accurate, like ‘former colonist’ or simply ‘former ruler’.
Obviously, had I made the launch in Kilkenny I find it highly unlikely that I would have brought any of this up with the current resident of Castle Blunden, Patrick Blunden, not simply because it would be rude, but also because he is six foot seven.
NO REPRO FEE 12/01/2018 Kilkenny Whiskey Guild. Pictured at a Kilkenny Whiskey Guild (KWG) tasting event are (l to r) Cyril Briscoe, KWG; Eddie Langton, KWG and Langton’s Hotel; Patrick Blunden, Castle Blunden; Kevin O’Gorman, Midleton Master of Maturation; Ger Buckley, Midleton Master Cooper; Dave McCabe, Midleton Blender; Paddy Purser, Forestry Consultant; Jim Rafferty, KWG and The Dylan Whisky Bar, in celebration of Irish Distillers next chapter in its Virgin Irish Oak Collection of Single Pot Still Irish Whiskeys; Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest edition. This exceptional offering has been finished in barrels made from Irish oak grown in the Bluebell Forest of Castle Blunden Estate in County Kilkenny. Photograph: Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland
