The Stanley Cup finals started over the weekend, and I’m back to checking the score when I get up to pee at 3 am. And as far as I can tell, there are exactly zero people here who have any interest in ice hockey. I know, I know, embrace the local traditions! Learn about hurling! The Gaelic Football! But it’s the Cup, man! I guess it is a good thing that the Bruins aren’t in it because then I would really have to review my priorities regarding sleep, etc.1
How on earth does one entertain oneself in a hockey-less world? The Midleton Distillery Experience is as good a place as any to start. Just to get us all on the same page, there is a lot of whiskey in Ireland. A LOT. If you are just some average Seosamh2 in Boston, you might think that the world begins and ends with Jameson or Bushmills and if you are really fortunate someone might give you a taste of the Redbreast on a very special day but anyone who comes here knows that there are about eleventy million more kinds and while I’m doing my best to work my way through the locals, it is a challenge given that some of the biggest brands and their sophisticated high end offerings are made right down the road in Midleton. So if you want a comprehensive introduction to how the Irish whiskey is made, you couldn’t start in a better (or more picturesque) place.
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The Midleton Distillery Experience has been slicked up since we visited in 2013 when it was just about the Jameson. Of course there’s a cool modern visitors center, thoughtfully incorporated into one of the original buildings and you start by watching a dramatic video about the history of uisce beatha3 in Ireland in a mod theater of wood all designed to make you feel like you are sinking into a barrel of whiskey.
According to these folks (and let’s all remember that history tends to be written by the victors and in terms of global market share, this is absolutely them), while Irish whiskey more or less flourished into the 19th c. (attempts by the fucking British to regulate and tax the production notwithstanding jeez and you wonder why we all rebelled), sales and production declined precipitously over the course of the 20th c. By the 1960s there were just a handful of distillers left and the big boys of the Republic said jesusmaryandjoseph we need to do something to save our national heritage teamwork will make the dreamwork let’s join forces and build a new distillery together, right next to that nice old one in Midleton. Thus, Jameson, Powers, and Cork Distilleries joined forces to create a company imaginatively named Irish Distilleries,4 built the New Midleton Distillery and now produce most of the Irish whiskey exported to the rest of the world. In fact, all the whiskey in Ireland, except for Bushmill’s which comes from Northern Ireland, was produced here for a while, until the Tullamore Dew and Paddy’s folks and the like took their toys and went home to ancestral or more local distilleries and some brash young upstarts5 started making their own more recently in places like Skibereen.6
Of course, now they’re all owned by the fucking French except for one that is owned by the fucking Japanese.
But other than that minor detail, which is not mentioned during the tour although I’m sure would have been answered directly if asked, here at Midleton they manage to make a massive company and huge global brand feel like a bit of the old sod that’s just being brewed up in the teachín7 by Kevin and Barry and Brian. Because the fact is that even if they are making it all in very modern machines nowadays, they still make whiskey the same way they always have - pot or column distilled, three times, and with all manner of special attention all along the way. And the tour staff all have that perfect Irish combination of charm and smarts that make their presentations completely engaging.
So what’s the big deal about Irish whiskey? Well in Midleton they’d say it is all about the triple-distilling, also the pot still, and maybe also the column still. Also the barley which all comes from within 200 miles of Midleton which is basically all of Ireland. Whiskey here is made from grain, water, and a wee bit of yeast8 and this is how they do it:
First, the barley is malted - soaked in water so it starts germinating and gets those growing sugars going and then it is dried to stop them and give them a little flavor. So frustrating for those little grains! Back in the day they malted the grain upstairs in the kiln, on these kind of perforated bricks that let the heat through, while coal-fired kilns burned below.9 And the workers who had to rake it all around wore these platform heels so they could walk around and rake up the grains without burning their feet on the heated floor.
i want to put on my my my my my malting shoes The grains are then milled by giant stones, and the resulting grist is mashed meaning mixed about in a tun with some water and heat so that it starts making those sugars again. Stop and start, stop and start, it's enough to drive a barley grain mad with indecision
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But of course, that’s the fermenting part, innit, when the sugars start to grow. So the wort (that’s what the sugary barley juice is called at this point) is separated from the mash and put into these enormous barrels with a wee bit o’ yeast to get good and fermenty. All of us cookers felt quite at home here because it smelled kind of yeasty, just like the Bread Shed!10
After a few days in the tanks, the Irish magic happens when the resulting liquid is put through three - count ‘em three - pot stills, which are basically these enormous gorgeous copper pots in which the wash is boiled and because the alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, that comes up first and goes through the pipe and on to the second pot where it gets more refined and also more alcohol and less water etc, and so on. The art, apparently, is in figuring out just when the best flavors and spirit level are coming through in the distillate - some are too strong and some are too weak and some are just right but you want a mix, don’t you? The Scots and the Yanks feel they get this whole business right after two distillations, the Irish say you need three and who am I to argue.
Of course, in a pinch, one will do.11
Now we are into the blending and aging process. Blending - I mean, I can’t really tell you anything about that because you have to be a master taster and have a master nose to sort it all out, and what a job that is. You have to know all your stock and what the market wants and what you want to make and how it all works together and oh yes what the cask it is aged in - and for how long - might affect taste. Yoicks! As for the barrels themselves, the Irish Whiskey Act says that for it to be called Irish Whiskey it has to be aged at least three years in casks made in Ireland except that last bit was removed a while ago because they don’t have enough oak left and it wasn’t very sustainable so in Midleton they use casks made in Spain and Kentucky and here is another whole art because some of the casks are charred on the inside to bring out the sugars and others have had sherry or port or something inside them first, all of which influences the flavor of the whiskey. Of course they have a whole cooperage at Midleton because you are always having to fix casks but they don’t actually make them there anymore.12
Usually a bit of water is added before bottling, just to smooth things out. If you ever see a bottle labeled cask strength, watch out because it means that the water wasn’t added so that is the absolute just out of the barrel product, tasty and strong.
Then there is the lab . . . the innovation distillery that is. This is basically a tiny distillery in the middle of the complex where the kids get up to no good and develop all kinds of whacky things including their Method and Madness label.
Then off the uisce beatha goes, bringing joy to all around the world, although I think most of the really good stuff stays right here. And that’s the story of whiskey. Do you feel informed? Good. I certainly did.
Near the end of the tour, you walk into a room filled with 10-year-old casks and the smell is divine - warm and caramel-y and just vaguely boozy. That’s evaporation for you! What vanishes is called the Angel’s Share.13 Generally that’s about 2% of your production, and one source suggests that at Midleton, the angels get about t’rty-four t’ousand botl's a day! The lights are low, it is very dramatic, and you can see what whiskey looks like at different stages in the ageing process.
Finally, we arrive at the tasting, which has dramatically improved since the days when they gave you a Johnnie Walker Red, a Jim Beam, and a Jameson, and asked which one you like best and of course you said the Jameson because the others aren’t particularly great and the Jameson, nice and smooth, came last.
Nowadays you get a Jameson, a Powers Gold, and a Green Spot, which is pretty fancy actually and my current favorite special occasion14 tipple. Guide Rebecca takes us through the flavor notes of each, as well as talking about the barrels and aging.
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Do I remember the specifics about any of them? No. Except the Green Spot, of which I now own a bottle because when in Midleton and all that.
And that’s the tour! Except that at the end you are shown into their big new fancy bar and given a drink ticket for a beverag-ino15 at the bar and everyone discovers the delightful Jameson and Ginger which is way better with Fever Tree than with Schweppes. Conveniently, the bar opens into the well-stocked retail shop . . .
But no rest for the tipsy because there is more - we’ve been booked for a Premium Tasting!16 So we are drawn aside by another delightful guide, Amber, into a special sitting room with comfy chairs and four glasses in front of each of us. We are joined by a guy from Colombia who has moved to Cork and figured he should get to know the area, and three tech bros, immediately identifiable by their black t-shirts and interest in high-end spirits. But the craic was grand, as Sue said, and the whiskey even grander. Jameson Black Barrel (so called because the barrel is charred twice to really get that caramel-y thing), Powers Johns Lane (one of the oldest local distillers in Dublin, an old fashioned Irish whiskey, named after the first place it was made), Redbreast 12 year old (oh yes), and Midleton Very Rare (oh mymymy so smooth and wow and it retails for about 240 euro 🫨)
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We are told that the way to remember them is: Black Barrel for everyday, Powers for a cold winter night, Redbreast is for Christmas dinner, and Midleton Very Rare, well, that is for a very special occasion.
Amber gives us all the details about casks and notes and aging and historical interest and do we remember them? No we don’t! But are we happy? Yes we are! Needless to say after that we all dropped some coin at the gift shop.
I also had a lovely row on Saturday morning, and got all manner of work done on Sunday but as you can tell the distillery was the highlight of the weekend. The Midleton Experience really is all that a bag of chips as we say back home and 10/10 recommend.
Slàinte!
It looks like the Panthers are going to just crush the Oilers, and I will predict here in five games, and one wonders if there will be goalie openings in Edmonton after this - but I hold out hope. That Connor McDavid seems such a nice fellow it would be a shame for them to lose.
Joseph, pron. sho-sav.
lit. “water of life”, pron. ish-ceh baa-ha, thank you Ian Richmond for teaching me this before I even left home.
This is Ireland, land of playwrights and poets! Surely they could have come up with something more creative.
I’ve been enjoying the output of West Cork Irish Whiskey for example, but it will be a challenge to get through them all before I have to leave. If you have watched Bodkin on Netflix, it is filmed mostly in Union Hall, Cork where West Cork has their distillery!
One of the best Irish names to say, right? Puts me in mind of Eloise’s pet turtle, Skipperdee.
cottage, chach-een, the second ch like in challah
In the New World, we use corn and things like rye and wheat for our whiskeys.
And that’s one of the major distinctions between Irish and Scottish whiskey - the former is just malted, heated, while the latter is malted over a peat fire, which gives it that distinctive smoke element.
They even do a proofing process in something called the bub-tank to add in the yeast. FERMENTATION - IT IS ALL ABOUT THE YEASTS!!
And their master cooper is the 5th generation in his family to be the master cooper at Midleton. That’s some heritage!
As far as I can tell, the Irish angels aren’t quite as messy as their Tennessee counterparts.
a.k.a. the weekend
Izzy and Peter term for a fancy bev.
Like it just happened to us somehow hahaha no of course not we signed up for that in advance.