Irish Whiskey

Normally I would be having a drink while writing this because that feels fitting.  But today, for maybe the 100th time I'm actually trying to watch what I eat and lose some weight and I figured maybe this wasn't the best day to actually have a glass of whiskey.  I want to talk about Irish whiskey.  The Irish claim to have invented whiskey, the word whiskey in itself being an anglicized version of the Gaelic uisce.  Some will argue that the Scots did it first, but from what I've seen and read, it seems the Irish did it first.  Either way, in my opinion the Irish make some of the best whiskey. With brands like Jameson, Bushmills, and Tullamore Dew, the Irish make my one of my favorite blended whiskies.  A blended whiskey for those who don't know means that multiple different whiskies and grain alcohols are blended to make the desired whiskey having a desired flavoring and coloring.  In Ireland this often means blending a single malt whiskey made in a pot still with a grain whiskey.  A lot of countries make blended whiskies including Scotland and the United States, but for me nobody makes a better blended whiskey than the Irish and among the Irish on any given day it would be a toss up for me between a bottle of Jameson and a bottle of Tullamore Dew.  I should also say, of the types of whiskey that I drink, I have least amount of experience with Irish whiskey and that is something that I'm hoping to really expand on as I continue to write this.

Right now in my closet I have three different bottles of Irish whiskey.

Jameson Distillery Reserve

The first is a bottle of 12 year old Jameson Distillery Reserve I bought in Dublin in 2010 at the Old Jameson Distillery, one of only two places you can actually buy it.   The whiskey is a blend of pot-still and neutral grain spirits aged in both sherry and bourbon barrels for 12 years to give.
While in Dublin I tried a dram of it and it was wonderful.  It was smooth and flavorful and at the time was the best whiskey that I had ever tasted it.  I much prefer it to Jameson 18 year, which is twice the price and in my opinion sacrifices flavor for smoothness.  Unfortunately I only bought one bottle when I was there and as a result I have been hesitant to open it until I go back and am able to get more, though that's probably not a good reason, but thankfully, whiskey doesn't go bad.  At some point in time I will likely open it and enjoy,  but I'd like to share it with someone else who can really appreciate it and my main whiskey drinking friend doesn't like Irish whiskey because he thinks there's to much of the tails (fusel alcohols) in there and that's unappealing to him.  I personally don't agree, and when I want something smoother than bourbon and cheaper than good single malt, I'll reach for a bottle of Irish whiskey.

Tullamore dew 12 Year Old Special Reserve

I also have a bottle of 12 year old Tullamore Dew.  It effectively is the same build as the Jameson Distillery Reserve.  As far as Irish Whiskey goes Tullamore Dew won me over purely on commercial appeal.  By that I mean I literally decided to buy a bottle of Tullamore Dew because of a commercial.  My girlfriend, who majored in marketing in college, would either be really proud of me or really ashamed of me if she knew, which now she probably will be.  If you haven't watched it, you should before reading this, just go and search for Tullamore Dew Parting Glass and it should be the first one that appears.  If you don't want to right now, that's fine though.  In the commercial four irishmen are sitting on a wall in pouring rain in a graveyard with glasses and a bottle of Tullamore dew singing a traditional song called The Parting Glass of which I am particularly fond thanks to the Irish wonder that is Glen Hansard.  The men look particularly forlorn and one of them gives a toast to his brother which sounds initially like a funeral toast, toasting to his lost brother.  Except that's not what's happening.  Church bells sound, one of the men looks around and smiles and the camera turns showing a beautiful woman in a white gown.  If you read this and haven't watched it, please do, and while you are at it watch Tullamore Dew's other commercials because they are wonderful.  The other men cheer and the man who turns goes to join his new bride.  I'm already known for being particularly sentimental, but that commercial really gets me and because of that commercial alone I bought my first bottle of Tullamore Dew, a 12 year old special reserve.  I don't know if I like it more than Jameson as I am not as good at remembering flavors as I wish I was (it's something I intend upon working on a lot more now as I work on this), but it is definitely something I could see becoming a staple of my liquor collection, and eventually, when I've worked my way through most of what I have I'd like to try some of the other Tullamore Dew's that are out there.

Writer's Tears

The last bottle I have is Writer's Tears.  It is a blend of pot still and single malt whiskies that are aged in bourbon casks.  If I'm being honest I actually only bought this because I was spending a lot of time on Reddit looking at different whiskies people were mentioning and the name intrigued me.  Unfortunately I was not able to find a bottle anywhere first.  I even spoke with someone I knew who runs a liquor store and he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to get it.  Eventually I was able to find a few bottles in New York City, one for myself and one for my friend who doesn't like Irish whiskey.  Giving him that bottle is how I found out that he doesn't like Irish whiskey.  I've only had a little bit of since I bought it, from the night I gave it to him, so I can't really comment much on it.  Maybe once I finish that bottle of Tullamore Dew, I'll finally get around to opening one of my bottles and have more to say on the subject.





For now though I think that's a good stopping point for now.  I don't know as much about Irish whiskey as I'd like to, but from what I've had it's my go to blended whiskey and what I want when I want plenty of flavor with less of the burn that bourbon gives me.  As I keep going with this I'll have to try more and more Irish whiskey and really sit down and compare them to see what the difference is between them and what makes some of the ones I haven't gotten around to special.

The Whisk(e)y Adventure Continues

Laphroaig Distillery, Augusut 2018

Hi, my name is Mojo, though many people call me Brian.  This is my first entry into something I would hopefully like to make into a book one day.  It is a book about whisk(e)y tourism, about travel, but about just finding out what there is out there.  While this will mostly be about whiskey (I'm just gonna stick with the "e" because it's easier to do just one) I'm hoping that it's ultimately about much more.  Let's start with what I'm drinking as I write: Lagavulin Distillery Exclusive, Bottled in 2017, at Natural Cask Strength of 54.1% abv.  I bought it will visiting Islay in August 2018 and the dominating flavor is (as any Lagavulin should be) peat.  But that's not what I want to write about today.  I want to start from the beginning, from the first time I had a real drink.

When I was in high school, I didn't drink.  I'm not saying that I never had a drink (I had one Smirnoff apple twist, if that even counts as alcohol), but for all intents and purposes, I just didn't drink.  I was never interested, and a large part of me judged those who did, though for the life of me I couldn't tell you.  For most of the first year I was in college this continued, as did my judgement of those who drank.  Then finally, it all change.  At first I couldn't even drink Coors Light I was consigned to drinking Limona Corona's and rum and Coke's that were more Coke than rum, though overtime I became more interested in beer, but this isn't about that. 

As a sophomore in college, I finally came across whiskey, in the form of an airplane bottle of Jack Daniel's. I mixed it with Coke (or Diet Coke), but I don't especially remember liking it very much and it seemed like that was the end of my foray into whiskey.  About a year later, I started experimenting with Evan Williams (about all I could afford) and Coke and mixing them in varying quantities to see what I could handle.  By the end of the that year I was drinking what my friends called "Mojo Drinks", basically 95% whiskey, 5% coke.   During my last year of college, I moved on to drinking whiskey neat (that is to say unmixed, unchilled and no water).  Most of the time, if I could afford it, it was Jameson or Maker's Mark.  Every year on Cinco De Mayo, my fraternity (really me) would throw a small party where a few of us would drink and part at my place called Cinco De Cinco (one of our brothers was named Cinco).  I only remember two things from my last one, which was only four days before I graduated: 1) I drank 18 shots of whiskey (probably bourbon) and then another 5 shots of whisky (airplane bottles of something from Scotland) 2) It was the season 8 finale (true series finale) of Scrubs and I cried a lot because I was sad it was over, just like college. 

The one thing I really don't have a memory of, but I wish I did, was when I first bought my first bottle of Lagavulin 16, because that was when it all truly began.  For those who aren't familiar, Lagavulin is one of a handful of single malt whisky distiller's in Scotland who are known for how peaty there whisky is.  Peat is the predominant flavor in any Lagavulin, and to someone who doesn't know what peat tastes like, imagine a cross between the smell of a man's beard after a particularly good cigar and a little bit of antiseptic.  Obviously, this doesn't sound particularly appetizing to a lot of people, but to me and many of my friends, it is a mana of which virtually nothing else can provide.  I would not call it an acquired taste.  I've never known anyone who has acquired it.  It is either something you like, or something you don't, there is really no middle ground, or at least none that I have ever seen.  The polarizing flavor of peated whisky is perhaps the most dominant and defining flavor of any liquor I have ever found.

So that's where it all started.  During college I worked my way up to drinking whiskey neat, and then sometime during that, or maybe slightly after, I started drinking single malt from Islay in Scotland.  This is going to be about that, and about single malt, but about so much more.  Often when I travel, I go out of my way (and sometimes travel entirely because of) whiskey and whisky.  Whether it be in Utah (High West in Park City), Colorado (Stranahan's), Ireland (Old Jameson Distillery) or Kentucky (Maker's Mark) I usually find the time to try something I've never had before and explore as much as possible.  I even built an entire trip around going to Islay (but that story is for another time).  That's what this will be about, where I've been, where I'm going and what is out there in the world of whiskey.  I want to try all of it, but I guess I'll be satisfied If i just try a lot of it and learn as much as I can.