I sometimes joke that if our house went on fire, the first thing I would save is the computer. I usually qualify this by explaining that obviously, I would drag people out first, but of the personal belongings, the computer would be the only one worth running back into a burning building for. This isn’t […]
Category: Whiskey
Articles written about and on whiskey.
The monster mash
What is single pot still whiskey? Is it the past, is it the future? Is it a uniquely Irish style of whiskey, an Irish Irish whiskey, a category within the category? Is it our secret weapon, or is it a marketing trick? Is it a common style, found around the world, a simple mixed mash […]
Pearse Lyons
After the passing of Dr Pearse Lyons of Alltech a year ago, I wrote this tribute piece for FFT.ie: Dr Thomas Pearse Lyons was a man who looked beyond the surface. Many business empires are built on marketing and spin, but Dr Lyons, a consummate scientist, spent his career looking deeper into animal nutrition, brewing […]
Alternative Ulster
I can still remember the first time I read Vice. It was a 2009 Babes of the BNP piece that summed up their ethos – sleazy, funny, and cruel. From the get-go I loved their skate-punk nihilism and cartoonish approach to journalism – a mix that that saw them become the go-to resource for disenfranchised […]
Key whiskey trends for 2019 or possibly never
It’s that time of year when we look at trends for 2019. Actually, that time of year was about two months ago, in a different year, but I was busy then, so it has taken until now to get this done. Predicting drinks trends is a risky business – do you play it safe by […]
Death and empire
I hadn’t been in Powerscourt House & Gardens since I was a child. My memories of it are vague – rolling down the grassy hills with my sister, getting lost in the Japanese gardens, and being scared by the statues of gods and monsters. Walking through the house and back out onto that incredible garden, […]
Some pics I took at a Cork Whiskey Society tasting this time last year. If you’re looking for a festive gift for someone, membership of the CWS is great value – thanks to the hard work of their committee, you get to taste unicorn whiskeys on a monthly basis. Join here.
Start to Finnish
A curious thing about the passage of time is how it is slower in our minds than it is in reality. Looking forward to anything feels like forever, while looking back it all seems like yesterday. In 2014 I was stumbling into an obsession with whiskey when I came across an Irish name in a […]
The Accidental Careerist
I was in a taxi on my way to the TV3 studios. It was 5am on a cold November morning in 2014, and I was about to appear on the channel’s breakfast TV show, Ireland AM. The driver and I were laughing about the fact that I was about to go on live television to […]
The Science Of Faith
“Nobody knows anything about us,” John O’Connell says of West Cork Distillers, the firm he co-founded and has poured 17 years of his life into. It seems incongruous – at a time when Irish whiskey is booming, one of the most grassroots, ground-up operations in the country is also one of its least well-known. This […]
Future perfect
And on the seventh day, the Irish whiskey category did not rest: It’s time for a Sunday morning press release: Irish Distillers announces €150 million investment in sites in Cork and Dublin More than €150 million is to be invested into Irish Distillers’ Midleton Distillery, maturation site in Dungourney, Co. Cork, and bottling plant Fox […]
A challenger approaches
Writer’s Tears – great name, great look, great whiskey. And now, in a sure sign that Irish whiskey’s stock is rising, this excellent whiskey is now a sponsor of WhiskyCast. Here’s some press release: The premium Irish whiskey, Writers’ Tears – Copper Pot, has agreed a brand partnership deal with the renowned WhiskyCast podcast produced by legendary whiskey […]
Arise
In the hills outside of Midleton lies the village of Clonmult. It is one of those blink-and-you-miss it places that is hard to find when you look for it, and passes by almost unnoticed when you drive through it. There isn’t a huge amount of things to see up there – the site of one […]
The perfect Finnish
Four years ago I interviewed a Corkman making whiskey in Finland – this originally ran in the Evening Echo in 2014, but as their whiskey is hitting the market I thought I’d dig it out. IRELAND and Finland have more in common than you’d think. Despite being on opposite sides of the European Union, we […]
Set the controls for the heart of the sun
Local mom-‘n’-pop operation Irish Distillers have released their results, sans mention of the alleged new plant they are planning. However, you can see from the figures that they are going to struggle to keep up with the demand at this rate, so it would suggest to me that they need to expand beyond Midleton. All […]
Requiem For A Dream
Between 1924 and 1932, a series of studies were carried out in Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory outside Chicago. The aim was to test if workers were more productive in brighter or dimmer lighting. Over the course of the study, a pattern emerged. When the lights were raised, the workers were more productive than […]