Sam Black says his firm’s logo has no real meaning. “It’s what the designer gave us,” he says bluntly when asked about the origins of the silhouette of a crow in flight. When pressed he admits that the image does conveniently tie his story together; he is the Black, while his wife’s maiden name was […]
Tag: whiskey
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, […]
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 […]
Protected: The Watchers
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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, […]
Any port in a storm
Hueston Station rn, no trains just overpriced scones and disappointment pic.twitter.com/KYJes7iEjl — Bill Linnane (@Bill_Linnane) October 16, 2017 We got to Heuston Station as the last train pulled out. It was only going as far as Portlaoise, so even if we had made it, we would still have had quite a walk back to Cork. […]
A long goodbye
In 2013, Barry Crockett retired from his role as master distiller in Midleton. His father Max was master distiller before him, and the family lived in the distiller’s cottage on the grounds. It was in this house that Barry was born. It was an old way of life in distilling, one that just […]
Today in ‘Things I Was Not Invited To’
When I joined Twitter three years ago, I struggled to come up with a handle. I opted for @Midleton_Rare, as I am A) from Midleton and B) a whiskey fan. When I started this blog I thought it a good idea to unify my ‘brand’ by having MidletonRared as the domain. Anyway, both the Twitter […]
Of human bonders, manifesto, faerie folk, perseids
Week 15 of the column, and somehow it still is a thing that exists: Few things in this world escape the oily touch of gender politics – not even our precious booze. From the manly pint of Guinness to the ladylike bottle of West Coast Cooler, marketing firms have yet to fully retract their […]
Forty shades of delicious
Have a little read in today's @irishexaminer about our quest to be organic and green. Because drinking beer doesn't have to cost the earth 😊 pic.twitter.com/sjC3GyJ9xR — MunsterBrewery (@MunsterBrewery) June 23, 2017 I wrote a couple of pieces for the Irish Examiner Food & Drink supplement; one about innovation in food and drink, and one on […]
Scents and scent ability
So I wrote a bit for the Examiner on the Aroma Academy’s Whisky Nosing Kit, something I had tried to buy on Master Of Malt at Christmas but it sold out. The main piece was on George Dodd, who is a Trinners educated Dub, and head of the Aroma Academy, but this was my lesser […]
Twilight of the gods
First, a death. Aleck Crichton, above, passed away recently at the age of 98, an impressive age for anyone, but especially for someone who led a tank battalion through Normandy in the aftermath of the D-Day landings. Somewhat ominously named after an uncle who died in the Great War, Crichton was badly injured in 1944. Returning […]
The Glorious Now
Craft used to mean strength. The original word in German and Scandinavian languages meant power, or might, but it was in Old English that the meaning was expanded to include dexterity or a skill in art or science. Modern use – and abuse – of the term by food marketing firms has led to it […]
Method Man
Science is something of a dirty word in the whiskey business. Consider the life and work of Aeneas Coffey. After risking life and limb as a gauger, he applied all he knew about distilling (and a lot of what Scots inventor Robert Stein knew) to a new type of still. It was cleaner and more […]