Triple Distilled Communications

Category: Whiskey

Articles written about and on whiskey.

How to say goodbye in Irish

I occasionally try to get my dad to join a club. It’d be good for you, I say, you should get out more. His reply is always the same: ‘I’m not a joiner’. Like Groucho Marx, he steadfastly refuses to join any club that would have him as a member. I’m a lot like him – I’m slow to get involved, to commit, to enthuse, which makes it all the more surprising that I took to whiskey with such reckless abandon. Someone recently asked me how one goes about getting ‘into’ whiskey, to which I replied ‘open a bottle and take a swig, get back to me if that doesn’t work’. I didn’t say that really, but the question did set me thinking about my tragic obsession with our national drink. Why whiskey? Why did I throw myself headlong into this, of all things? Why not sport, cars, stamp collecting, Pokemon – anything; why? And the answer is a Shauvian ‘why the hell not?’ But the big questions is ‘how’ – because behind every superfan is a newcomer who was scared to ask a question. So here’s how it happened for me.

Perseverance, persistence, severe thirst

I’d love to tell you I had some magical epiphany upon first tasting Ye Olde Pot Stille Whisky at the wake of some fenian son, but I didn’t – I just liked the idea of whiskey: It’s intrinsically Irish, interesting without being elitist, an everyman drink. So I just decided ‘this is something I could do’. So I started working my way through Paddy, Jameson and Powers, first with mixers and ice, then just ice, then straight. Like most humans with a functioning gullet, it burned the first few times I tried it straight – but in a good way, like with a hot curry, or roaring the lyrics to The Fields Of Athenry. So I kept at it, and soon, the epiphany arrived. In Citizen Kane, there is a scene where the titular anti-hero destroys the room of his lover. Orson Welles strides about the room wreaking havoc on the contents. When the scene was finished, Welles walked off set, hands bleeding from the damage he had inflicted, and said to one of the crew ‘I felt it, I really felt it’. He had disappeared into character, abandoned the self. That was it for me and whiskey – at some point I crossed the line from wanting to like whiskey to genuinely loving it. So while you can’t force yourself to love something, you can certainly give yourself plenty of opportunity for it to happen. I used the same approach to trick my wife into falling for me – she dumped me twice when we were kids, but I knew if I was pig-headed enough she would eventually give in. And she did, with all the grim resignation of a cornered rodent. Hooray for love!

‘Internet friends’

Once I had gotten ‘into’ whiskey – ie, I could drink it without reacting like Edward Scissorhands – I was ready to share my new passion with the world. The Irish Whiskey Society is a great way to start exploring and expanding your palate. Their monthly meetings will provide you with some rare and pricey samples to tick off your list, without having to break the bank by sourcing them yourself. But since I have four kids (and, as previously stated, I am not a joiner), I don’t get to go to many of their events, as I rarely have the time, the money or the ability to stay awake past 8pm. And so to the internet, where fandoms go to thrive. The internet is a great resource for the budding enthusiast – there are any number of whisky blogs and sites that can teach you a lot. There are also some great YouTube channels – Ralfy Mitchell’s being one of the best, walking a fine line between whisky review, history lesson and witty polemic. An undertaker by trade, Ralfy’s talent lies not in his knowledge or his ability to communicate with confidence, but rather that he has that rare quality of being very likeable on camera. Fun fact: I once tried to make a whiskey review vlog, and upon completion it had all the fun atmosphere of an Isis beheading video.

Manic tweed preachers

So by now you’ve tried a few drams, you’ve got the knowledge and the experience and you want to share your passion with friends and family, so what do you do? You keep it to your damn self, that’s what you do, because much like religion and politics, people don’t generally want a 25-minute lecture on why their beliefs are wrong. This is partly because not many people give that much of a shit about what they eat and drink. Most of us take a fairly utilitarian approach to what we consume – does it taste ok, is it cheap, will it soothe my fretful mind? – these are the basics for us. Who cares that a chicken for the Sunday roast costs about the same as a Sunday paper – sher that’s just great value, nothing terrifying about it at all. So just like you don’t tell sleepy shoppers at the express checkout that their dinner is a Frankenfood nightmare, you likewise don’t tell the person next to you at the bar that vodka is a drink for people who don’t know what to drink. I can see it in people’s eyes when I start to drone on about whiskey – they rapidly lose the will to live, because not everyone gets it, or even wants to – and that’s ok, because I get it, you get it, we get it. So I try not to preach, or even correct people when they’re wrong, like the taxi driver last week who told me Paddy no longer exists and is somehow just known as Jameson now. A simple ‘how interesting’ through gritted teeth is all this situation requires, lest it descend into a scene from Collateral.

Coppa stills, dolla bills

So you like and possibly love whiskey – now to expand your collection. Specialist shops are great, going in having the bants with the staff, browsing the latest expressions – but they are expensive. Go online – it is a lot cheaper, even with P&P. I use Master Of Malt, mainly because I was on a whiskey junket with one of the chaps from the site and he seemed sound. MoM has a great blog, chat option, amazing selection and prices – but overall there is a great tone to the site; witty, fun and irreverent. They also do tasting sets – small samples of up to five different distilleries, often grouped by region; a fantastic way of educating yourself. There are plenty of other sites, but MoM is my favourite, and they also do Christmas crackers with whisky samples in them, which is great since I am the only one who drinks spirits in my house: ‘Hic, shut the hell up grandma, and pull this goddam cracker with me’.

Fill-up Glass, a pun on Philip Glass

So you build up a bit of a collection, maybe five to 15 bottles, and you want to enjoy them the right way, so you will need some glassware. The Glencairn is the industry standard for nosing (don’t call it sniffing, that’s what dogs do) and tasting (don’t call it drinking, that’s what boozehounds do), but Glencairns are five quid a pop. Your collection has already set you back 40-70 euro a bottle, so you are going to be looking for a cheaper option. This is where charity shops come in. I love them – okay, as soon as you walk in the door you find yourself paraphrasing the kid in The Sixth Sense by announcing ‘I smell dead people’ – but you know what dead people liked? Spirits. So there will be plenty of old whiskey tumblers, along with some branded whiskey glasses perfect for nosing, tasting, sipping and generally containing whiskey.

I use an old Carolans glass (above left) that cost me 50 cent, and if I’m just having a drink without being pretentious about it, I just use Tesco tumblers (above right) that are a fiver for a pack of four. No need for Waterford crystal – a simple vessel lets a decent whiskey shine, and is lighter in the hand for keyboard warriors like me who have atrophied Gollum arms.

How to be pretentious

So you have the kit, the hooch and the enthusiasm – it’s on to the skills. These aren’t really those elusive skills that require training, like parallel parking or removing a water meter – this is just learning to trust your instincts. When I started getting into whiskey and listening to people at tastings rattling on about what scents they were picking up, I felt like it was those magic eye posters from the 1990s all over again. A guy stands up and says ‘wow I am getting wet cement, a Nairobi sunset and the concept of ennui on the nose here, what are you getting?’ And all I was getting was slightly intoxicated. Tastings are all about confidence – in the beginning you will get whatever notes are suggested to you, because our sense of smell is incredibly easy to manipulate.

For fun, take your glass of whiskey, go into a quiet room and close your eyes. Inhale the scent – what do you get? Beyond the alcohol burn, beyond the vapours – what else is there? Take a sip – is it what the nose suggested, does it smell like it tastes, or vice versa – and what effect does it have in the mouth, apart from making you warm and drunk – is it mouth coating or astringent – or what? Once you swallow, how long does the flavour stay in your mouth? This is called the finish, and the longer it goes on the better; it should be like descending into a fractal, an endless spiral of hidden flavours and notes you hadn’t encountered already, falling through layers of sensation. Or it may taste like total shit, who knows – but at least you gave it your full attention. Mind you, telling your spouse and kids you are going into a quiet room with a glass of whiskey may lead to some sort of intervention, so just tell them it’s research. They won’t ask any more questions beyond that point because they will be terrified.

Perspective

As for the objectivity of taste: The notes you experience, the things you taste – they are you. They are the summary of your life experiences, because you can only reference your own memory bank, your own sense of taste and smell. I can’t use plantain as a reference, as I have never tasted it. All the things I taste tell the story of my life – creme anglaise, pine smoke, creme brulee, fruit coulis, sauna wood, smoked reindeer – honestly, I have come up with some of the most deliriously middle class notes I have ever seen; high praise, given that this is whiskey we are talking about. So it is completely subjective: I did a blind tasting last year. On one of the whiskies I picked up a note that I hadn’t sensed in a long time. When I was a teenager I went out with this girl whose father had a thing for mothballs. He had them all over the house, to a point that he must have had a genuine concern that the actual Mothman was going to attack the house, rather than a concern his Farrah slacks might get nibbled by some gothic butterflies. As a result, his daughter always smelled like mothballs. So when I nosed this whisky (in The Whisky Shop in Dufftown) all I got was that – memories of her, long black hair and screaming matches, her throwing Manic Street Preachers CDs at me, that strange sense of loss that sometimes sneaks up on you: You know – mothballs. What you sense from that glass is all about your history – so don’t think that anyone is trying to tell you what to get on the nose when they say ‘apples!’ ‘honey heather!’ ‘a burning wheelie bin!’ – share who you are, your own experiences, your senses and your creativity. Or just make crazy shit up, really it doesn’t matter – just don’t feel threatened. Look at the tasting notes on SMWS bottlings; they make little – yet perfect – sense, because they are all about ideas, moments, and feelings as opposed to telling you exactly what something tastes like.

Burden of spoof

One of the greatest confidence builders you can have as a whiskey newcomer is taking part in a blind tasting. I took part in one in Gordon and Macphail that had at least two world renowned whisky experts in attendance. We were asked to identify region, cask, age, and marks were out of 25 – the experts lost to a random Norwegian who got 14 points. So, despite the many souls claiming in their Twitter bio to be experts, really they are few who have that forensic sense of taste and smell – strip away the labels and not that many people will be able to tell you what they are drinking. On this note, I’m proud to say that I know almost nothing about whiskey, and if you ever see me putting ‘whiskey expert’ in my Twitter bio, you can shoot me in the head.

Unbeweaveable

One last thing – at some point in your journey you are going to start thinking about tweed. You will see people wearing it, and think you might look good in it too. My advice is to enjoy tweed responsibly. Use it in moderation, because nobody wants to be a ‘full-kit wanker’ when it comes to a material with the density of kevlar. There are few sadder sights than somebody succumbing to heatstroke at Feis Ile because they refused to take off their thick hessian bonnet or loosen their 12-tog waistcoat in 28 degree heat whilst drinking nothing but cask-strength smoke oil.

Sláinte

As I pointed out in a previous post (one that I would casually describe as being part social diary, part suicide note), my dad has a lot to do with me getting into whiskey. He was a fan, so I figured it’d be cool if I was a fan. Over the last six weeks I’ve been living with him, rummaging through his whiskey collection to see if there are any rarities in there – the one in the pic up top being the only one of note. The reason I’m here with him instead of at home with my wife and kids is not that my marriage is dying, but that my father is. He’s 85, so it was only a matter of time before something struck, and so cancer has come calling. He had incredible health almost all his life, and he was starting to feel almost invincible. Up until a few weeks ago was fiercely independent. Now I am making his meals and holding his hand when he walks. He is like Oisín, home from Tír Na n’Óg, crashing to the earth and ageing 300 years at once. He is just finished radiotherapy, and there have been several occasions over the last month when I thought he was going to die in front of me. On Father’s Day he split a vein in his leg and lost about 500ml of blood. As he lay on the ground, blood spraying out of him with metronomic precision, I kept think ‘this is it, this is it he is dying and I can’t do anything to stop it’. And as he lost consciousness he turned to me and whispered ‘make sure you record The Sunday Game’.

The paramedics came, brought us into the emergency department, we got treated and came home for me to clean up what looked like a scene from Dexter. Then I made his lunch.

This is what we do: Kids become parents become kids. This is the cycle of life – human existence is just one long series of arrivals and departures. He keeps telling me he doesn’t know what he would do without me, and I keep thinking, what am I going to do without you?

Yesterday we had an appointment with the oncologist. She told him that this cancer is going to end his life. When she left the room, he said ‘I just wish I had indulged more, and just drank a lot more whiskey’. I told him not to worry, I’ll drink enough for both of us. So at night he has a glass of Guinness (or two) and I have a dram (or three) and we watch Nationwide. So this is where we are right now – somewhere in the middle of a long goodbye, raising a glass together, saying hail and farewell. And FYI – he made me promise to keep the glassware.

My point is this – what makes whiskey interesting to me is the people. Really, any fandom is about people; sure, there is something about your passions that are particular to you, but finding other people with the same passion is what keeps it alive. And it doesn’t matter if it’s on the internet, in the Celtic Whiskey Shop or on a trolley in an emergency department – people make it interesting. For me, whiskey is part of my inheritance. It is how I celebrate my dad and all he did for me. For you it will be something else, you just need to figure out what that is. And that is how you get into whiskey.

July 26, 2016
I am sitting in a dark room taking pretentious photos of whisky I just bought

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

July 16, 2016
The Fountainhead
Christian Davis, Editor of Drinks International, Billy Leighton, Head Blender for Irish Distillers, Brian Nation, Head Distiller at Irish Distillers and Justin Smith, Publisher of Drinks International.

I’m not sure that many people in Midleton are aware that one of the world’s most significant distilleries lies just outside the town. It sits there on the skyline, silently creating and maintaining the bulk of the world supply of Irish whiskey.

Of course, the local lack of understanding isn’t helped by the fact that it still gives Bow Street as the address on the bottle – I once got into a heated argument with a family member from the big smoke who would not believe that they no longer make Jameson in Dublin. ‘But it says it on the bottle’ he kept telling me. But the distillery is here in east Cork, just over my left shoulder as I write this. It gives me an immense sense of pride to be from Midleton – effectively, the home of Irish whiskey for several decades. And, of course, there is always that local pride to see them celebrated on the world stage, which they have been once again:

Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard has been named Producer of the Year at this year’s prestigious International Spirits Challenge (ISC), topping the ‘World Whiskies’ group that not only encompasses the Irish Whiskey category but also all other world whiskies, showcasing the continued prowess of Ireland’s leading whiskey producer.

Irish Distillers picked up the accolade at an ISC award ceremony, held at the Honourable Artillery Company in Central London on July 6th.

Speaking at the event, Brian Nation, Irish Distillers Head Distiller, commented: “This prestigious award is testament to the dedication and commitment of the passionate craftspeople at the Midleton Distillery; past and present. It is a huge honour to be part of a team that is collectively recognised as producer of the year for all world whiskies, and a fantastic motivation to continue crafting our award-winning products with the utmost care and consistency.”

Now in its 21st year, the ISC is one of the world’s most influential competitions in promoting outstanding quality spirits. The competition is founded on a rigorous and independent judging process, and receives more than 1,300 entries from nearly 70 countries worldwide.

One of the things that industry people will tell you is that it isn’t the scale of the Midleton operation that is most impressive about it, but rather the versatility – as one master distiller in Scotland put it to me ‘it’s not how much they can create, it’s what they can do – that’s what is so remarkable’.

In short, Midleton distillery can make a lot of whiskey, but they can also make a lot of whiskeys – they can remix and rewrite to create a vast array of spirit styles long before they even start thinking about wood. A good example of this diversity is in the list of expressions that won medals at the ISC this year:
- Jameson Black Barrel (Gold)
- Jameson 18 Year Old (Gold)
- Jameson Bold (Gold)
- Jameson Round (Gold)
- Redbreast 12 Year Old (Gold)
- Yellow Spot (Gold)
- Powers John’s Lane Release (Gold)
- Jameson Original (Silver)
- Jameson Signature (Silver)
- Jameson Caskmates (Silver)
- Jameson Crested (Silver)
- Jameson Lively (Silver)
- Redbreast 12 Year Old Cask Strength (Silver)
- Redbreast 15 Year Old (Silver)
- Redbreast 21 Year Old (Silver)
- Green Spot (Silver)
IDL recently rebranded a few of the above into a more unified style, something that reflects the changing times here: For years we had a few distilleries trying to look like several – and now there are several distilleries here it is time for the big producers to circle the wagons and place some of their brands under one flag.

As someone who loves the variety of IDL’s output, I’m not wild about the idea. I can see the logic behind it, but to see a cult classic like Crested 10, with its old fashioned styling and inaccurate name (it’s not ten years old) being rebranded into a sort of rugby jersey-looking yoke is just depressing. But if it was a case of rebrand or retire – which it possibly was, given Crested’s lack of profile – then I guess I can suck it up.

I had hoped to get this garbage written without mentioning millennials, but since this rebrand is most likely aimed squarely at them, I’m going to. The Makers’ and Deconstructed series are effectively a painting-by-numbers introduction to whiskey, taking drinkers on those first few tentative steps from blends down the rabbit hole to personalised Glencairns, tweed waistcoats and terrible puns on the word ‘dram’. Dramnation awaits you all!

But this re-positioning makes sense – given the huge boom in Irish whiskey, you want to bring as many people into the fold as possible, even if it is with a trio of whiskeys which sound like a tragic personal ad – ‘lively, round and bold’ – or another trio of whiskeys which sound like like something out of Roger Melly’s Profanisaurus (Blender’s Dog being a particular offender in this regard).

As for new expressions, who knows – but this interview with Master Distiller Brian Nation mentions Gan Eagla, which is the Irish language version of the Jameson family slogan, sine metu; without fear. It might as well mean ‘without age statement’ since that seems to be the industry trend – churn out as many NAS titles as your marketing team can dream up and keep charging premium rates for them.

But we live in hope: I’d love to see a Red Spot (they still have the trademark, there’s still a chance!), or more of the creativity that gave us Dair Ghaelach, or anything with a little bit more depth, and a few more years on it. I am very, very far from being any sort of whiskey expert, geek or even a proper blogger (30,000 posts on here, a couple of hundred on whiskey), but I’d like to see less NAS, and more quality, aged whiskeys coming from my hometown. I know they have it – when I look out the window all I can see is acres of warehouses, stacked to the rafters with barrels just waiting to be emptied down my gullet.

But until that glorious day, let’s just all agree that IDL are getting it mostly right as long as they don’t resurrect Kiskadee rum:
July 14, 2016
Ballindalloch in black and white, The Glenlivet in living colour

Some terrible photos I took during Spirit Of Speyside 2015, chucked through that editing software Google gave away for free recently.

July 9, 2016
Tiny acorns
The whiskey writer Fionnán O’Connor has a term he uses to describe the world of whiskey marketing – the ‘theatre of heritage’. It encapsulates the tragic machinations of marketing firms as they struggle to place their brand origins within ‘ye olde days of yore’, or pin Brand X to an ancient narrative or the name of someone ‘too dead to sue’ as Blackwater Distillery’s Peter Mulryan puts it. So when a whiskey brand has the courage to be in any way modern, it is a breath of fresh air. And so to one of my favourite Irish whiskeys, Writers Tears.

Apart from the fact it has the greatest name in the spirit world, it has beautiful Orla Kiely-esque packaging and tall, elegant bottle that makes it a stand-out dram before you even open it. It is also a mix of pot still and malt, which gives it a depth that belies its official status as a blend. Genuinely, this is one of my ‘you gotta trys’ – something that I am not alone in, given that multi-award winning sci-fi author Spider Robinson did the same in 2015, saying: “I’ve tried most high-end Irish whiskeys, and always kept coming back to Bushmills 1608. But I just switched loyalties. I freely confess I was initially attracted by the name alone. I’d have bought my first bottle just to own the bottle, even if the contents had been undrinkable. But it’s not why I’m now already up to my sixth bottle—and at approximately CAN$65 per bottle! In my opinion, it tastes like what God drinks when He’s sitting at His typewriter.”

Bernard and Rosemary Walsh.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bernard Walsh, the man behind Writers Tears, last year at the Jameson party here in Midleton. Bernard sources his whiskey here in east Cork, and while he has a long-term supply contract with Midleton, he has also just opened his own distillery in the wonderfully named Royal Oak in County Carlow. Here are the deets from a press release sent out on the day:

Whiskey distilling returned to County Carlow after an absence of over 200 year as husband and wife, Bernard & Rosemary Walsh, the founders of Walsh Whiskey Distillery officially opened their €25million Irish whiskey distillery by the banks of the River Barrow at Royal Oak, County Carlow. Royal Oak is now distilling Walsh Whiskey Distillery’s whiskeys, The Irishman and Writers Tears, which are already sold in 40 countries worldwide.

Officiating at the opening with the Walshs was Augusto Reina, Chief Executive of Illva Saronno SpA of Milan (owners of drinks brands Disaronno and Tia Maria) which has a 50% share in the Walsh Whiskey Distillery at Royal Oak.

Located on an 18th century estate comprising 40 acres of pastoral land, the distillery is the only independent Irish whiskey distillery producing all three styles of Irish whiskey – pot still, malt and grain from its two production lines using both pot stills and column stills.

At full tilt the Walsh Whiskey Distillery at Royal Oak has the capacity to produce 650,000 cases (two and a half million litres of pure alcohol (LPA’s) or 8 million bottles) of whiskey annually which is 9.7% of the total Irish whiskey exports in 2014.

The company actually commenced distilling on Easter Sunday this year and is laying down stocks for release from 2019 onwards after the minimum three year maturation process has been completed.

The new distillery puts Walsh Whiskey in control of its own destiny. The three key differences the distillery at Royal Oak makes to Walsh Whiskey are:
1. Increased Supply to Markets: The considerable production capacity will enable the company to increase supply to the 40 markets where The Irishman and Writers Tears are already sold – especially the core markets of the United States, Canada and Europe (including Russia).
2. Target New Markets in Asia: The company is already leveraging its partner Illva Saronnos’ established relationships in the Asian markets which hold great potential for Irish whiskey. Illva Saronno has major operations in India and China as well as an extensive distribution network. Countries targeted, other than India and China, include Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
3. Increase the Range of Irish Whiskey Expressions Through Greater Innovation: The keys to whiskey’s character and taste are the oak barrels used to mature them and what they have previously contained. Walsh Whiskey Distillery at Royal Oak has sourced a great variety of barrels and butts from its own and its partner Illva Saronnos’ international contacts to create every taste and hue possible for whiskey drinkers to experience.
These include bourbon barrels from Kentucky (USA); sherry butts from Jerez (Spain); Rum barrels from Saint Lucia (Caribbean) and Marsala wine casks from Illva Saronno’s own Florio Marsala Winery in Sicily (Italy).

Walsh Whiskey Distillery will allocate up to 15% of its annual production to contract sales and has recently sealed its first deal with Altia (a leading wine and spirits company in the Nordic and Baltic countries).

There was a strong attendance by the company’s international distribution partners with representatives from 22 of the 40 countries across 4 continents that already distribute The Irishman and Writers Tears. The countries represented were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Malta, Northern Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom & the United States of America. There were also some interested observers in the form of drinks industry executives from India and Australia.

The distillery at Royal Oak will also include two maturation houses with capacity for 60,000 barrels. Work on these buildings will commence in 2017.

The distillery, which is also designed as a visitor experience, will be open to the public from this July. The tours will also incorporate the 18th century Holloden House (c.1755) in a few years when renovations are complete. A total of 75,000 ‘whiskey tourists’ are expected to visit annually by 2021.

The operations at Royal Oak will create a total of 55 permanent and part-time jobs in the Carlow area, over 5 years. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, through Enterprise Ireland, is supporting the project.

The founder of Walsh Whiskey Distillery, Mr Bernard Walsh said: “After 17 years in business, the opening of our own distillery is both the fulfilment of Rosemary and my own dreams and a game changing moment for the company. We are now in control of our destiny and have the capacity, variety and relationships to play our part in the continued revival of Irish whiskey which is one of this country’s great traditions.”

He added: “That we can do this in a place like Royal Oak which is blessed with an abundance of the best natural ingredients as well as being a place of beauty and tranquillity is idyllic. We look forward to sharing our whiskeys and Royal Oak with the world.”

Mr Augusto Reina, Chief Executive of Illva Saronnno, Walsh Whiskey’s strategic partner said: “Illva Saronno is enthusiastic about the opening of Royal Oak and proud of the partnership with Walsh Whiskey Distillery. We look forward to continuing our support in the coming years through our know-how and expertise in the global spirits’ market.”

Michael Cantwell, Divisional Manager for the Food and Drink sectors at Enterprise Ireland said: “Enterprise Ireland is pleased to have supported this project at Walsh Whiskey Distillery. We have worked very closely with the team throughout the development of the project and welcome the employment that will be created at a local and regional level”

The distillery comprises 4,000 cubic metres of concrete, 60 kilometres s of cabling, 400 tonnes of structural steel and 30 tonnes of copper and steel whiskey distilling equipment.

Environmental Considerations

Walsh Whiskey Distillery has prioritised environmental responsibility in the design of its operations including:
- By product from the production process (draff and pot ale) is recycled back into the farming industry as animal feed.
- Cooling water from the distillation process is recycled back to the River Barrow.
- The entire facility is heated using its own energy generated by the whiskey production processes. This heat supply will also eventually heat Holloden House, which dates back to c.1755, when it is fully restored in a few years time.
- The building materials used are sympathetic to the environs. The buildings are roofed in slate roof in keeping with Holloden House, copper fittings are applied, the warehouses will be clad in green and creeper plants trained up the walls and the roadways are sunken to limit visibility in what is a pastoral rural setting
- Royal Oak is home to seven species of oak tree and Bernard Walsh has commenced plans to develop an oak arboretum by planting more species under the guidance of consultant horticulturalist, Daphne Levinge Shackleton. Three young oaks (Turkey Oak and English Oak) were recently planted in from of the distillery to replace trees lost to storms in recent years.
- A stone wall restoration program will also be implemented.
If Bernard Walsh had wished to mine the past for a brand narrative, Holloden House – above in the background – has an illustrious history:

It was previously the home of Colonel Philip Doyne Vigors, an explorer of some note. His papers went to auction in 2012, and the accompanying bio reads thus:

Philip Doyne Vigors (1825-1903) was a younger son in an Irish Ascendency family who joined the army in 1846 and was stationed in Sydney, New South Wales, from 1849 to 1858. He was an intellectually curious man and his light military duties left him with plenty of opportunities to pursue his interests in natural history and aboriginal cultures. His family had a strong scientific background – his uncle Nicholas Aylward Vigors was one of the founders of the Zoological Society of London – and his writings leave the reader in no doubt that Vigors was inspired by his excitement at the extraordinary landscapes of the Pacific region, and at his exposure to different cultures. During his time in Australia Vigors wrote extensively about his experiences and findings, and put together extensive collections of seeds, minerals, shells, animal specimens, and cultural artefacts.

He also travelled on penal ships, landing on at least one occasion in Hobart in Tasmania (then Van Diemens Land) – now a modern whisky Mecca and home to Old Hobart, among others. As for his later life, in December 1880 he was Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army and stationed in Washington DC, then he was named Vice President of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. He died at Holloden on 30 December 1903. The last descendants left Holloden many years ago, and after a lot of neglect it really is great to see its restoration included in Brendan’s plans. This was how it looked when they launched their plans in 2013:

There is some video from the interior of the building in this from the launch:

I would imagine Bernard Walsh has been waiting for this moment for a long time – after years of bottling the products of other distillers, he can now start to really experiment with his output, and hopefully expand on an already very solid core range. And for once, this writer can safely say he hopes to enjoy a lot more Tears in future.

And if you think that outro is the worst thing you’ve read, consider the fact that I just wrote a blog post about an event I wasn’t even at.
July 4, 2016
C’est la guerre

Via http://source.southdublinlibraries.ie/handle/10599/11107

I’ve written a bit about my ancestor, Colonel Jim Fitzmaurice, in the past. He was a fascinating character, making aviation history, fighting in the Somme, then slowly fading into obscurity and near-poverty towards the end of his life. My dad always tells stories about him, his plummy RAF accent and how he stuck out like a sore thumb in a newly independent Ireland, like some relic of a bygone age. I recently came across the book written by Fitzmaurice and his two colleagues about their Atlantic crossing – it is quite the read, not least because it covers his wild youth, the Somme and horrors of the First World War, but also the terror of their journey in the Bremen and his vision of the future for aviation, both in Ireland and around the world. The book is written by each member of the crew in turn, but this is Fitzmaurice’s section:

Part II by Major James C. Fitzmaurice

(more…)

June 30, 2016
Oh Tamdhu, you are better than this.

June 13, 2016
A Suir thing

The best interviews are the ones carried out over a period of time, across a series of encounters. A mutual understanding is achieved, a certain level of trust established – a basic human connection made (the incredible R. Kelly piece in GQ recently is a good example). I had intended to try and interview Mark Reynier since I first heard he was after buying the site in Waterford – but time passed, and, after a few nationals gave him small bits and pieces of coverage (the exception being the excellent piece in the Sunday Times), and I felt there wouldn’t be much opportunity.

So I shelved my plans and instead just invited myself down to Waterford to see the distillery and have a nose around. I didn’t expect to meet him, not to mind spend a couple of hours chatting with him, and so it was on the way back I started to scribble down some notes and somehow ended up with five thousand words of overblown, pretentious waffle. I wondered what the hell to do with it, contemplating flogging it to one of the Sundays in a tighter form. But one of the points Mark made struck a chord with me – a lot of whisky writing, a lot of journalism generally, is bought and paid for by big firms. Everyone has a bias, an agenda, be it dedicated self interest or just paying the bills, and ultimately everyone compromises. So I thought, fuck compromise – I can write something for Average Joe Newspaper Reader, with lengthy explanations of malt tax, alembic stills, and grain spirit, or I can write something that assumes a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the reader, in my own pretentious style and in my own self-indulgent way, with my choice of images and on my own blog. Granted, almost nobody will read it, but fuck it, at least it will be done my way. And so it was, and although it really is far too long, I was happy enough with it. It reminded me of why I loved blogs, and was also a timely reminder I was blogger first (on MySpace, no less) and a journalist much later.

Recently I’ve seen quite a few bloggers claiming to be journalists: If you ever worked in a newspaper, you would know that really being a journalist is not a whole lot of fun, nor something you would aspire to be. You will spend your career compromising, constantly seeing your work cut up and pulled apart over fears of litigation, business interests or simple personal grudges. At least bloggers get to speak in their own voice (albeit to a tiny audience) and have a certain amount of autonomy. Of course, they also suffer from a lack of accountability, but at least having worked in a newspaper I have a fair enough grasp on the difference between truth and fact.

I digress. There are a few other posts around the web I’d like to point to if you’re interested in reading more (tightly edited) pieces about Waterford Distillery. First up is the post by David Havelin of Liquid Irish, which I tend not to even think of as a blog anymore. Read by industry and consumer alike, it is consistently excellent – insightful, balanced, thought provoking; really it is so much more than a blog. His piece on Waterford has some incredible detail on the plant site, and is a great read.

There are also a couple of interviews with Mark Reynier you should read – I like this one in particular, as he tells the story of how he finalised the deal on Bruichladdich the day his son Ruari was born. If you’re wondering why his son has such an Irish name, it’s possibly because Mark’s wife Maureen is from Sligo. Another factoid I discovered when I was with him was that his maternal grandmother’s family came from Cavan, which in turn might explain why he is a Catholic who was educated by Benedictine monks. No doubt the monks would be delighted to know their former pupil is distilling a few hundred years from Ireland’s oldest Catholic cathedral. All this info sorta threw my ‘mysterious stranger’ angle on him into a cocked hat, and I was tempted to rewrite the whole piece as ‘local lad Mark O’Reynier comes back to the old country’. But I stuck to my guns and hammered out a load of existential nonsense instead. Hooray for blogging.

The excellent Malt Review also interviewed Mark not so long ago, and that is well worth a read, mainly as it is considerably more tightly edited than my post. Malt Review is one of the better whisky sites, and is fantastically, brutally honest at times. There is a storm raging at the moment about bias on blogs, with brands being seen as having too much influence. But again, this is something that has been a problem in the media for years, but especially so now that most print titles are haemorrhaging money – consider the housing crisis here in Ireland. It was bizarre to see editor after editor of national titles turning up at the recent State inquiry into the banking crisis, all claiming that property sales had no influence on their editorial stance. The only thing you need to know in this regard is that the Irish Times – the paper of record, the benchmark of Irish journalism, the title by which all others in this country should be judged – splashed out 50 million euro on a property sales site. If they were hooked on property supplement revenue, everyone else was already at a Rick James level of addiction, and no one wanted to call the cops to the party and have their dealer busted.

Like I said, we all operate on a certain amount of dedicated self interest – if something makes your life better or even just a little easier, it can be very easy to blind eye to the ethics or the morality of it – be it flogging overpriced property to the working poor, shilling products on your blog, or pretending that lying to the public is really just ‘clever marketing’. Let’s all just hope that the Age Of The Influencer is coming to a close and blogs can get back to being what they were always meant to be – an angry jerk’s shortcut to getting fired.

Although my trip to Waterford had many highlights – meeting Lisa and Mark, seeing the distillery, eating my first Blaa (above) – there were a couple of disappointments. Firstly was the fact that Henry Downes pub was not open. They have their own brand of whiskey which they claim to blend in the basement of the pub. I was keen to get in there and see this blending space, as frankly I wanted to call bullshit on it. Surely modern health and safety law would prohibit such odd carry on? However, one of the locals said it was highly likely the did actually do the blending in there, as ‘nobody would tell the Downes what to do’. That said, my source on that was no less credible than ‘the guy working in Tully’s pub’. He also told me that Waterford brewery was bought for seven million euro. Sher I could have bought that meself with my confirmation money.

Tully’s is nice, so here are some terrible photos:

Second on my list of Pedantic Disappointments was that I never got to see the Bilberry goats. There is something so bizarre about a load of feral French goats living on a rock overlooking a distillery that I really had to see it for myself. Fun fact: The hilly area just beyond Midleton distillery’s warehouses is also called Bilberry, and it is where I was from, which led me to introduce myself at parties as ‘Bill from Bilberry’ when I was a kid. Thankfully I didn’t get invited to many parties.

Bilberry goats above the grain store, a feral herd related to Pashmina goats, arrived circa 1700 with the Huguenots pic.twitter.com/amPpPsxPXI

— Waterford Distillery (@WaterfordWhisky) December 21, 2015

However, I did get to take this photo:

That’s my bottle of Dumbarton single malt, in front of one of the stills that made it. Dumbarton really was hideous, and is no less hideous now, so it’s great that Mark saved the stills from extinction, and finally found a use for them. And he really is fantastic company – he held court on so many subjects, and he gave me plenty of food for thought. I didn’t necessarily agree with all his points, and I don’t think he would want me to. But he was spot on about a lot of things, specifically a tightening of the regulations governing labels and sourced whiskey. There are so many firms now who are selling sourced whiskey and trying to create some grand illusion about its origins that the mind boggles. It’s fine for the geekier whiskey fan, who knows that they are all Cooley, but what about the novice who is trying to expand their tastes? How will they feel when they discover that all those different brands they were trying all came from the same distillery? Cooley make some great stuff, but Jesus there is too much of it floating around in various ridiculous forms – it is basically Count Olaf from A Series Of Unfortunate Events, randomly showing up all over the place with a fake beard, terrible accent and shit backstory.

Arr I’m Cap’n Sham, and I be westing by sextant to the land of marketing makebelieve.

A little bit of honesty would go a long way – where the whiskey came from, what was done to it to make it that colour, was it chill filtered; these things don’t really matter to the average consumer, so they won’t hurt sales – but it would mean a lot in terms of trust with the more devoted fans. It’s unlikely that this is going to happen, but with a new era of whiskey making here, newcomers are bringing fresh ideas – you can read whiskey bonder Louise McGuane’s fantastically vitriolic post about a similar subject here. It raises some important points about ethics – mainly that what is best for Irish whiskey producers might not necessarily be best for Irish whiskey, or its consumer. It’s great to hear a growing chorus of dissenting voices in the sector – individuals like Louise McGuane and Mark Reynier who are willing to shout ‘no pasaran’ – because accountability is never a bad thing. And that’s coming from someone who once almost got fired over a blog he had on MySpace.

June 12, 2016
L’Étranger

As a species, we have become completely estranged from what we consume. Over the last few centuries we have transitioned from living on locally grown, native foods to barely being able to tell what we are eating, where it came from and what has been done to it. The quote that inspired William S Burroughs’s Naked Lunch hold a lesson for us – it suggested a frozen moment when every person truly saw what was on the end of every fork for what it was. Burroughs was suggesting a moment of existential dread, but he might as well have been talking about what we eat and drink – we currently have no clue what is on the end of every fork, and, perhaps even more so, what is at the bottom of every glass.

The whiskey world is awash with the smoke and mirrors of marketing – terms like artisan, small batch, craft; they mean absolutely nothing, yet are attached to each new brand as though they are reinventing the wheel. All over Ireland and the UK there are brands that are making misleading and often false claims about what they are, who made it and where. All of this is seen as simply being part of ‘the game’ – a comfortable untruth that most of the industry goes along with. However, there is one man who has been battling for more than a decade in his attempts to reconnect us with the origins of our spirit.

Mark Reynier was a third generation wine merchant on a cycling holiday in Scotland when he decided to visit the home of one of his favourite whiskies – Bruichladdich distillery on the island of Islay. Reynier cycled up to the gates of the distillery, only to find them locked with a sign reading ‘plant closed – no visitors!’

Spotting a security guard patrolling the yard, Reynier waved to him and asked if they could have a look around. The guard’s reply was a succinct ‘fuck off’. And off Reynier did fuck – but when he returned, he came with investors, capital, the keys to the plant and a dream to bring the distillery back to life using 200-year-old methods. Enlisting the help of local distilling legend Jim McEwan, he created one of the most iconic whisky brands of the modern era – a spirit born of centuries old distilling methods, yet fresh, brash, brave and bold.

However, the most revolutionary ethos of Bruichladdich was its dedication to terroir – a term previously used mostly in wine circles, meaning the microclimate that leads to differing flavour profiles of different vineyards. Reynier experimented wildly with Bruichladdich, but it was his celebration of the humble barley grain and the land that bore it that was the most memorable of all.

Bruichladdich’s legend grew and grew, and eventually the fiercely independent brand was sold to drinks giant Remy Cointreau. But, in typically contradictory fashion, Reynier voted against the sale – even though it made him a wealthy man. He wasn’t ready to sell, he said at the time; he still had more to do, more to give the distilling world. Shortly after the sale he disappeared, like Kaiser Soze, with no one knowing if the whisky world had seen the last of him. That he reappeared some time later was not the big shock; it was rather, where he reappeared that caused the most surprise.

Photochrom of Waterford in 1900 via the Library Of Congress.

Nestled on the south-east coast of Ireland, Waterford is the country’s oldest city. A compact and bijou urban space situated above the confluence of the Three Sisters, it is a city of outsiders: Settled by the vikings in 932AD, its name is derived from the Nordic ‘Vadrarfjordr’ – the fjord of the rams, a fitting name given that this city is home to its own indigenous herd of feral goats. The goats do not go back that far, but rather came with the Huguenots three centuries ago, along with the city’s legendary Blaa, a type of doughy roll. The goats live on Bilberry Rock, a high outcrop overlooking the city, and right beneath their hooves lies Mark Reynier’s new project; Waterford Distillery.

Reynier bought the old Waterford Guinness brewery from Diageo for a sum that is rumoured to be considerably smaller than the 40 million it was worth. What he got for his money was a recently renovated brewery, which he then converted into a distilling powerhouse in a few short months, rehiring some of the staff who had been laid off by Diageo. On his Twitter he posted regular updates from the redevelopment, and proved that his success with Bruichladdich had not lessened his ability to be an uber enfant terrible. In interviews he bemoaned the lack of ‘mindfuckery’ in Irish whiskey, slammed the monopolies by massive firms, and generally rattled cages and ruffled feathers in a scene that was previously rather chummy. Just as he did on Islay, Reynier revelled in his outsider status – like Camus’s anti-hero Meursault, he came across as a man who had enough of the lies, the deceit and the conceits. But beneath all the bluster, there was a very serious plan being put in place.

As the plant was being re-engineered, Reynier was out walking through fields and talking to farmers about grains, soils, yields and dreams. He put in place a network of farms along the east coast who would supply him with barley for his spirit, taking his twin ethos of terroir and provenance to an almost forensic level. But which came first – the desire to make whiskey in Ireland, or the lure of the deal of the century?

“Ireland,” he says immediately; “and I’m enjoying every minute of it here. It was two things that brought me – one was an old boy at Bruichladdich, Duncan McGillivary. I can vividly remember him sitting on a wall on a sunny afternoon, saying that the best barley he ever saw in his career – and he had been there for 35 years – came from Waterford port. And it always stuck in my mind. Of course, here you are two hundred miles nearer the equator than Islay – Cambridge is on the same latitude. The climate is milder, so barley was the big draw.

“Scotland, whisky-wise, I had been there, seen it, done it. So there was a chance to make a mark in Ireland, because the whisky industry seems to me to be just all over the place. So all that was intriguing and seductive – and at least it’s not like the 110 major distilleries in Scotland.

“Finally, of course, it was to do with this extraordinary place being available. It took us just a year and four days to get going – it would take three years at least to set up a distillery from scratch. But I came here for the barley primarily.”

And as for the culture shock of moving to Ireland, he was well prepared: “Having dragged my wife and son from Sussex up to Bruichladdich, on the remote, wild and windy Hebridean island of Islay – a Gaelic island – not Scottish, Gaelic – that was pretty difficult; an extreme contrast. The parameters which define oneself, the habitat, the ecosystem, friends – they all go out the window; we basically said goodbye to our previous life.

“The way I explained it once was, it is a bit like you have been invited as the star guest appearance on Eastenders, and you turn up on set, but you have never watched Eastenders, you have no idea who’s having sex with who; who was murdered, beaten up or shunned, who is cohabiting, or has those ‘extended family’ connections with who, because you have never seen the previous episodes, let alone the last series. It’s of course one-sided because everyone knows everything about you.

“And it’s not just a few months but hundreds of years. One time, I wanted something delivered to my house, and it never got delivered and I couldn’t understand why. It turned out that the delivery guy, his grandfather had once an argument with the person who owned the track to my house, and he wouldn’t travel down it. And this was a hundred years later. I still have a house there in Islay and I love being there, we all do.

“But one of the best things about here is that I have had so much fun with these guys, where one can just talk and joke without fear of offence. And that has been a really rewarding experience. We started here implementing what we wanted to do, right from day one, with an enthusiasm, open-mindedness and alacrity.”

Reynier has now started distilling individual spirit from individual farms, and can track the differences accordingly; in a scene filled with obfustication and untruths, he is now in the unique position of being able to say ‘this is the field, this is the grain, and this is the spirit they created’.

Lisa Ryan, head brewer at Waterford Distillery, with a sample of barley from the farm of Leonard Ashmore.

To emphasise the focus on barley, Waterford Distillery has no master distiller – but it does have a master brewer. Lisa Ryan was one of the staff laid off by Diageo when the brewery closed, and her rehiring meant Reynier brought in someone not just with experience of high-end brewing, but who would be a system native; there would be no learning the ropes, just down to work from day one. Reynier says his structure is a more realistic, practical arrangement: “We have a distillery manager, head brewer, chief engineer and head distiller. Each relies on the other – buildings, barley, machines, spirit – and the responsibilities are equally divided.”

The plant had been used by Diageo to create the concentrate from which overseas Guinness is made, so it obviously needed some adjustments – the largest of those adjustments being the acquisition of stills. But this was another piece of the puzzle that slotted into place. When Reynier was in his early days with Bruichladdich, a friend of his known as Demolition Dave (a slight misnomer as he is now one of the investors behind Waterford Distillery) tipped him off about something special lurking within the soon-to-be-levelled Dumbarton grain distillery.

Secreted away inside this massive industrial grain-distilling operation were two small pot stills – known as the Inverleven stills. Reynier saw an opportunity, bought the stills and shipped them to Islay, where he intended to use them to revamp and restart Port Charlotte distillery, close to Bruichladdich. They never made it there, but one did adorn the front garden of Bruichladdich – with a pair of wellie boots sticking out the top. So when he bought Waterford, he knew where to get two stills to skip the potential three-year wait for Forsyths of Rothes – the Rolls Royce of still makers – to create new ones. Forsyths did play a hand, upgrading and mending the stills, and then they were installed, and brought to life, in the south east of Ireland, all ready to make a spirit that reflected their design – elegant yet full-bodied, delicate yet strong.

The Inverleven stills in situ in Waterford.

“Every distiller likes to have their own-designed stills, it’s the personal flourish of any new distillery, but we know what these stills can do – we know what the style will be we can determine what goes in, of course, how the stills are run, but the weight of the spirit is determined by that still shape.

“If you have very tall, narrow-necked stills, you will produce a very floral, elegant spirit. If you have very short, dumpy stills you will have a heavy, oily spirit – and there is nothing you can do about it. Laphroaig, for example, can never ever ever produce a light, floral spirit because they have short, dumpy stills. You can’t change it. That is how it’s going to be. We know that these Inverleven stills are going to produce a floral spirit, because of their shape. So then the question is – how are you going to run them? And we have the facilities here to produce very, very good-quality wort and wash, clinically the best – you can’t do anything better. So then it is a question of how slowly we run those stills, and because we have all this space and the control we can run everything exactly as we please.”

That space may be getting a little smaller, as there are plans to order four more stills from Forsyths over the next five years. Clearly, this is not a short-term venture.

The main gates; the old brewery is on left, the new distillery on right.

What strikes you first about Waterford Distillery is the scale of it – on approach it is dwarfed by the hulking, quartz-riddled presence of Bilberry Rock. But once you get close, you begin to grasp just how massive it is. A modern, elliptical frontage houses much of the current operation, while to the rear is an old brewery, crying out to be transformed into a visitor’s centre.

The inside of the old brewery.

Beyond is the Barley Cathedral, where the grain from each farm, each field has their own storage space. This allows Waterford to create a single field, single farm, single cask, single distillery, single malt. You could probably throw ‘single master brewer’ in there too, given that one of the farmers supplying them is Lisa Ryan’s father. And as they have the capability to propagate their own yeast, you might as well throw in ‘single single-celled fungus’. Although that might not look so appealing on the label.

Along with all those capabilities, they also have an evaporator – with which they can make single grain spirit. So is he going to?

“No.”

Definitely not?

“No. Single malt is what I want to do – single malt, single malt, single malt.”

And no pot still whiskey, or as he calls it, mixed-mash: “Why would you want to mix the mash, when you’ve got the greatest barley in the world? Why on earth do you want to compromise it?”

Maybe as a nod to Ireland, or even just as a cash-in, I suggest.

“Who says it’s a nod to Ireland?”

Isn’t it an Irish tradition, a traditional style of whiskey made here?

“A tradition which they also use in Canada, America, and all over the world. So there is nothing unique about it at all. The fact that Pernod say this style of whiskey ‘is’ Ireland, is purely for their marketing, they want to own it because they have most of it. There’s no real evidence that this is the definitive Irish style, we know that people were making single malt back in the 19th Century too. Besides, the terminology is a nonsense; internationally, what does “pot still” mean to a whisky consumer? It means an inanimate, dumpy copper vessel used for distilling whisky rather than a mix of malted and cheaper, unmalted barley with some maize or rye bunged in.

“But it’s an intellectual proposition – why do you want to make a dumbed-down version? Why?”

So that is how he sees pot still whiskey – a dumbed-down single malt?

“Single malt is the most complex spirit in the world, flavour compound wise. If you drink a blended whiskey, all that flavour you get isn’t the grain whiskey, the grain is there to stretch the flavour. Analytically, we know that single malt is the most complex spirit. It is the reason why kids, when they drink spirits when their parents are away when they are 16 and get hammered, they never touch whiskey ever again. They will drink vodka again; they drink cognac again; they drink calvados again; but they won’t touch whiskey because the flavour – their brain remembers it, because there was so much of it. You don’t see winos hoovering down single malt whiskey – or whiskey. You see them hoovering down vodka.”

So if he had been offered a third still for free, so he could triple distill – again, in the Irish style – would he have taken it?

“No, no, but you can triple distill with two stills too. We might do a bit for fun. But by distilling up to 80% rather than 70% you are just losing more body and flavour. We triple-distilled a bit at Bruichladdich and several Scottish malts are triple-distilled. Anyone can do it.

“In Ireland you have that habit of beer and chaser – that’s how whiskey was enjoyed – so the more straight-forward, accessible it was, the better. Perhaps the lowland Scottish distilleries got the custom of triple distillation from 19-century Irish immigrants? Whereas you don’t see people in pubs drinking single malt, even in Scotland – unless they’re tourists. It is a more elite, expensive thing. But it used to be primarily a component of blends. Very few people back then drank it as a single malt and if they did it was as new spirit straight off the still.”

So the evaporator may not be used for single grain; it will be used another way – to reduce the pot ale for shipping as pig feed. Less water in it means less weight, ergo less cost.

“We have a fancy vacuum-operated column still called a Sigmatec. I didn’t really know at the time I bought the place what it was. Guinness used it to de-alcoholise – or strip – stout. Talking with engineers I asked if it could do the reverse and they said yes. With a few tweaks and adjustments, some re-piping, and voila: a state-of-the-art column still. But my interests don’t lie there. This project is intellectually and financially focused on single malt. However, it’s a reassuring back-up to have up your sleeve.”

Likewise there will be no white spirits, and definitely no selling sourced whiskey under his own branding, a tactic used by the majority of new distilleries in Ireland to generate revenue. However, it is also a practise that has been abused, with some independent bottlers playing fast and loose with their marketing material, and striving to create the illusion that they distilled the product themselves.

“Well this is Ireland’s big problem. And it isn’t going to solve itself, I fear. There isn’t the interest or the will within the industry it seems to me to do anything about it. There isn’t the money to enforce regulations, even ones for the common good, because at present you have only Pernod Ricard, Jose Cuervo, William Grant and that’s it. The IWA (Irish Whiskey Association) isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the Scotch Whisky Association (which incidentally represents the whole spirits industry, not just Scotch). I don’t see it having the mandate or the power to bring much-need discipline to labels, presentations, marketing material and claims, that will build the much-needed credibility of the Irish whisky sector.

“Abroad, if you ask whisky drinkers about Irish whiskey I’m afraid you’ll find there is not a great deal of trust. That confidence has to be earned. Sure there is a huge enthusiasm now in the Irish whiskey sector, but there is also perhaps, shall we say, a certain naivety, too. In the absence of clearly defined, acceptable practices, there are some bottlers that play fast and loose if not with the actual rules (there aren’t yet many) but certainly the spirit of them.

“If you go to the duty free at Dublin Airport and they have more than 100 Irish whiskeys, but they are from just three distilleries, but you’d swear blind with all the master distillers listed on those labels there were at least fifty distilleries producing all that hooch.

“But I’m a libertarian at heart. Look – to a degree I can understand all this wild-west approach, after all I used to be an independent bottler myself once. Ours is a heads-down, get on with it no nonsense operation and sod ‘em all.

“In Scotland, an authoritative SWA provides the necessary guidelines to protect the reputation which every one for the greater good follows. It isn’t onerous or police state stuff; it is common sense. I certainly had my run-ins with them when we didn’t see eye to eye. But here it is a wee bit more freestyle, more individualistic shall we say, and I don’t really see it changing any time soon. But it needs to.

“I can already hear the “coming over here telling us what to do” complaints, but there is a truly great opportunity for Irish whiskey. A reset button has been pushed. These are exciting times. But equally a regulatory framework needs to be constructed too, to guide, to keep us all on the straight and narrow. It isn’t onerous; it’s not finicky; it ain’t Big Brother. It is for the greater glory of Irish whiskey.

“Some of the marketing spin is mere over-exuberance, some of it is deliberately disingenuous, and some of it is naivety. Some of it is outright fraudulent. But I don’t see anybody having either the will, the foresight, the authority or the money to challenge it. That’s why I am focussed on what we are doing here, doing my own thing.”

But given that Ireland is in a ‘wild west’ state – being as it is in a state of rapid rebirth and expansion, a new frontier for this generation – Reynier has some suggestions on what a new sheriff might look like.

“The Irish Government should say ‘right, we shouldn’t get involved, because we are short-term politicians, here today, gone tomorrow; equally, the industry should not be involved because they have got interests that are non compatible – remember the banks and self-regulation? – but we should do what France does with Champagne; create an apolitical body in between the industry and the politicians which is a civil servant-run to represent the long-term interests of Ireland and not powerful industry players nor biddable politicians’.

“It says ‘Product of Ireland’ and “Irish Whiskey” on the label, so somebody should be representing Ireland’s interests.

“This council would agree with the Irish Whiskey Association with a set of guidelines and procedure – the SWA has it all already – which should be applied to the whole industry, It is important to get this sort of thing sorted now it will be much harder to retrofit once the horse has bolted.”

Given the startling quality of his barley network, it comes as no surprise that his wood policy is equally ambitious – and just as honest.

“We don’t need to experiment with casks, I know exactly what is needed. We have the same policy for every farm, so again it is experience – I know what works. At Bruichladdich we had to do a lot of remedial work because when we first started we couldn’t afford good oak and our accountant undervalued the influence of the oak, or rather good-quality oak, and if you haven’t got the money to buy the barley then you haven’t got the money to buy good oak – it’s an industry-wide issue. Wood is the first thing that gets cut from a struggling budget. And of course wood values in recent years has doubled. The importance of good quality oak is now more important than ever.”

Important – yet expensive, and across the industry there are plenty of ‘innovations’ in the area of wood that no one dares talk about: “Ultrasound, music, heat, oak essence, de-charr, re-charr, tannin injection – all sorts of remedial shortcuts are available – and caramel of course.”

You can assume he isn’t going down that route: “Certainly not! So we set this company up with a very healthy budget for wood – almost the same as the barley. Now if you go back a few years ago, wood represented 10% of production costs, it is more than 40% for us, and I defy you to find anybody in the whole whiskey industry that has that budget ratio. I know from experience there is no shortcut for great quality raw ingredients and time. And that includes the wood.

“We are investing this huge sum because I know that if you are going unplugged, making natural whiskey, then there are no shortcuts – you’ve got to have good quality wood. We are making an artisanal, natural product, hence we have total traceability, beyond parallel, to prove everything we do. There is no compromise: What we say is what we do. We mean it.”

But all this dedication to the product is an added expense: “Of course it is. But by the time it gets into bottle, in five or ten years time, it is a relatively small amount; it has cashflow repercussions now, but by the time we get to market it will not make a difference in the bigger scheme of things.”

Looking into the future brings up the subject of just how many distilleries Ireland can take before it hits full capacity – clearly the full number touted by the IWA will not make it to production, many were pipe dreams that are already falling by the wayside. But there are currently roughly 20 either operational or getting there. So how many is too many? How many more can one island take?

“No more, in fact there are too many. There will be tears before bedtime. Some people optimistically think ‘oh wouldn’t it be nice to have a distillery’ but the cheap bit is building it, the expensive bit is running it, and the even-more expensive bit is bringing it to market. That’s where there will be a big reckoning: I wonder if the marketplace is big enough to handle not just Ireland’s start-ups but more from the US, the UK and other countries too.”

For anyone interested in the highs and lows of starting a distillery, they can look no further than Reynier’s Twitter feed. With typically caustic honesty, it presents the failures alongside the successes; if equipment broke during the refit, it was tweeted, along with information about disappointing yields from some grain, disagreements between head brewer and distillery manager over the characteristics of new-make spirit – all there for the world to see. His messages are the antithesis of the sanitised, corporate message from most distillers.

“Well you can’t separate the good from the bad, when things go right they go right, and then sometimes they don’t. For example, we were tasting some new spirits the others day, and some of them were good, some were very good, and some were a bit dull – well that’s fine and that is out there in the world.

“If you’re going unplugged – I can’t see how you can just go a little bit unplugged; you either are or you are not. Everything I have ever done has been unplugged – whether it was in the wine industry or Bruichladdich, so I think philosophically it is where I am happy at.

“I also think that globally there is an anti ‘big food, big drink’ thing going on; people have got too bored. You go out the door here to a pub and there is no-one in there, and you have no choice; either a stout or a lager, and you have to ask – why bother, if they are all selling the same thing, the same way? In the old days it was the craic that got the people in, but there is nobody in the pubs now.”

And just as the Irish pub has been struggling against a generational shift and the decline it has wrought, distillers lament the duty laws here, claiming they are crippling the industry. Not so, says Reynier: “It is higher than Scotland but it is the same for everybody – whether it is gin, vodka, poitín, it is the same. So you are only in a comparative field. It is what always makes me laugh every time there is a budget the SWA go on about duty and stuff and you think ‘well hang on a second, 90% of it is exported, so nobody pays duty on that at all’.”

Mark Reynier is extraordinary company, a complex spirit full of seemingly contradictory elements – profound yet profane, combative yet charming, witty and deadly serious all at once. He comes across as a man utterly frustrated with the spirits world whilst still passionately in love with it. Throughout the couple of hours I spent with him, he did not sit down once; he paced the room, gesticulating as he made his points, constantly moving, forever restless.

Mark Gillespie describes the maverick Texan distiller Chip Tate as being the Steve Jobs of the distilling world. If that is the case, then Mark Reynier is that world’s Stanley Kubrick; an auteur who refuses to work within the system, a creative visionary who is utterly unwilling to compromise, who is almost obsessively dedicated to craft, to the pursuit of perfection. He is a man intent on destroying the status quo, compelled to point out that the emperor wears no clothes. His attitude to life reminds me of the motto of another outsider who came here from Scotland to build a distilling empire; sine metu – without fear. When I ask him if he thinks he might have ruffled some feathers since his arrival here, he smiles and says “Oh I certainly hope so. I certainly hope so.”

Ultimately, what makes Mark Reynier an outsider is not where he comes from, but rather that – like Camus’s weary homme du midi – he is simply a man who is no longer willing to play the game. This project is about change, disruption, evolution: Why should he doff the cap, bend the knee or even spell whiskey with an ‘e’? His is a singular vision – of Ireland being the home of the world’s greatest single malt, and his distillery is celebrating the soil and grain of Ireland, the farmers who work the land.

Reynier firmly believes he is fighting for the pride of Ireland, and that the honesty and transparency of his whisky, when released in five years time, will offer us a novel experience – a frozen moment when every Irish whiskey drinker truly sees what is at the end of every glass, knowing exactly where it came from, who made it and why – and, for the first time in a long time, we will be able to enjoy a truly naked dram.

May 31, 2016
Changing of the guard at Irish Distillers

More moves in IDL:

Dublin, May 12^th, 2016 – Irish Distillers, Ireland’s leading supplier of spirits and wines and producer of the world’s most well-known and successful Irish whiskeys, has today announced the appointment of Louise Ryan as Managing Director – Ireland.

Louise’s appointment will come into effect from 1st July. Louise will be a member of the Irish Distillers Leadership Team and report to Jean-Christophe Coutures, incoming Chairman and CEO of Irish Distillers.

Louise holds a degree in Business Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an MBS from the University College Dublin Graduate Business School. Prior to joining Irish Distillers she held a number of senior marketing and sales roles, including that of Commercial Director, at Mars Ireland. In 2011 she joined Irish Distillers as Head of Business Development and most recently has worked as Strategy & Insights Director with dual reporting to the CEO and Marketing Director.

Louise replaces Pat Magee, who has been appointed General Manager – Florida at Pernod Ricard USA. Pat’s appointment is part of a Pernod Ricard USA business transformation project aimed at accelerating the group’s current momentum in the U.S. It has a simple objective: grow value market share in a sustainable way. Pat joined Irish Distillers in July 2007 as Business Unit Director – Retail. He previously held senior commercial roles with Reckitt & Colman Ireland and the Eason Group and has a Masters in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business UCD. In July 2009 Pat was appointed Sales Director (Retail) and has been on the Irish Distillers Leadership Team as Managing Director – Ireland since September 2011.

I just pray that this new, hyper-sales focussed team won’t mean NAS releases as far as the eye can see. We live in hope.

May 12, 2016