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 […]
Category: Whiskey
Articles written about and on whiskey.
The Watchers
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 heights
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 […]
Today in ‘Things I Was Actually Invited To’
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 […]
The end of the beginning
It’s hard to say if 2017 was what you would call a great year. It was certainly one of changes – we settled into our new home (my old home) and learned to adapt to terrible broadband (PS4 games take a week to download), rubbish windows (we all wear parkas indoors) and beautiful scenery (it […]
Altered states
A few years back, I was talking to a distiller about gin when Peter Mulryan came up in conversation. I asked what he thought of Mulryan’s approach to gin making – his wild experiments. The distiller admitted he admired Mulryan, but simply said ‘he’s gone too far’. It reminded me of Eddie Jessup, the scientist […]
Powers and glory
The resurgence of Irish whiskey was hard fought. It’s easy to forget just how close we came to losing the entire category back in the 1960s. There are a few people who deserve thanks – the coopers, the operators, the staff who lost their jobs or worked a two-day week to keep the industry alive, […]
The 12 drinks of Christmas
Wrote this for the Examiner: Our little nation may not have the respect for its food culture, but when it comes to drink, few nations do it better. The last two decades have seen us spread our wings, with an explosion of craft breweries, distilleries, even wineries. With all that we have to […]
It’s beginning to look a lot like advertorial
I wrote a few bits for the Examiner to go in a seasonal supplement on Midleton, naturally I started with the distillery, then a well-curated email interview with Ignacio, above, GM of the heritage centre, and a couple of other bits, including one on Iceland. You pay me and I will write about anything guys, […]
Whiskey Live Dublin 2017
An incredibly quick post on whiskey Live Dublin. It’s basically the All-Ireland, Christmas, The Eid and Glastonbury all rolled into one. I love it – loads of vendors, loads of great whiskeys, and loads of Internet Friends who you finally get to meet in real life, albeit after quite a bit of booze so it […]
