Saint Patrick’s Day, colloquially St. Paddy’s Day or Paddy’s Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17.

The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Montserrat. In Canada, Great Britain, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.

It became a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding[2] in the early part of the 17th century, and is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The feast day usually falls during Lent; if it falls on a Friday of Lent (unless it is Good Friday), the obligation to abstain from eating meat can be lifted by the local bishop. The date of the feast is occasionally, yet controversially, moved by church authorities when March 17 falls during Holy Week; this happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick’s Day was observed on April 3 in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and happened again in 2008, having been observed on 15 March.

Named after one of the most famous regions in Ireland, Connemara is one of nature’s masterpieces. The rugged Atlantic coastline and majestic mountains blend with the rain-soaked peated bog lands to create a landscape of unique natural beauty.

Connemara Peated Single Malt Irish Whiskey captures the beauty of this region while reviving its traditions. This rare and original find among Irish whiskeys is a single malt, beautifully gilded in peat reek. Managing Director of Cooley Distillery, David Hynes and chairman John Teeling resurrected the traditional Irish custom of drying the malted barley over peat fires with this peated single malt. The smoke rising through the malted barley during this drying process confers the whiskey with a distinct peaty flavour and aroma. These traditional distilling methods combined with natural ingredients and long years in oak casks continue to create a whiskey that is simply exceptional!

The distillery uses only the finest Irish barley and has its own spring water source coming from the Sliabh na Gloch river high up in the Cooley mountains.

The distillery produces Kilbeggan and Lockes whiskeys, as well as Connemara single malt, Ireland’s only peated whiskey, Tyrconnell single malt and Greenore, Ireland’s oldest single grain whiskey. Other products include Michael Collins single malt, and a Michael Collins blended version.

What makes Cooley’s whiskey distillery distinctive is their use of small copper pot stills with very large necks. These cause the spirits to take 50 percent longer to pass through, and the distillers believe that the result is a more refined product. In addition, many Cooley brand whiskeys are distilled only twice as opposed to the more common Irish method of distilling the spirits three times. This gives Cooley’s products much more flavor than most Irish whiskeys. The whiskeys are matured in the 200 year old granite warehouses of Kilbeggan Distillery located in County Westmeath, some 60 miles away.

Products

• Tyrconnell
• Greenore (single grain)
• Kilbeggan (blended)
• Locke’s (blended)
• Millar’s (blended)
• Connemara (peated)
• Inishowen (peated)

History

In 1966, John Power & Son, John Jameson & Son and the Cork Distillers company (which owned the Old Midleton distillery) mergered to form the Irish Distillers Group. The board of the newly formed company decided to close their existing distilleries and consolidate all production at a new facility. This was built at Midleton as it was the only existing site with room for expansion. In July 1975, production ended at the old distillery and began in the new one. The old distillery has since been turned into a visitors’ centre.

Production

Midleton is one of the most modern distilleries in the world, and with a production capacity of 19 million litres per annum is the largest in Ireland. The distillery boasts thirteen 75,000 litre stills, both pot and column, which are used in combinations of three to produce different types of whiskey.

Whiskeys Produced

As a result of the different stills combinations that can be achieved, a range of different products can be produced.The most significant brands produced are:

• Jameson — The best selling Irish whiskey in the world
• Jameson 12yr Old, Gold, 18yr Old, Rarest Vintage Reserve and Distillery Reserve
• Powers
• Paddy
• Redbreast
• Midleton Very Rare

The grain whiskey for use in Bushmills is also produced here.

Green Spot is a pure pot still Irish whiskey, produced specifically for Mitchell & Son of Dublin, by Irish Distillers at the Midleton Distillery, Cork, Ireland. It is the one of the only remaining bonded Irish whiskeys, and is currently the only brand specifically produced for and sold by an independent wine merchant in Ireland.

History

Mitchell & Son wine merchants, were established in 1805; however, it is uncertain exactly when Green Spot was first produced. It is known though, that by the 1920s Jameson’s Bow Street Distillery was supplying Mitchell & Son with at least 100 sherry hogheads of pure pot still whiskey per annum.

Half of the casks used had previously held oloroso and other darker sherries, while the other half had held lighter finos. This was to prevent the wine from overpowering the whiskey. The whiskey was allowed to mature in the casks for five years, before being vatted and allowed to blend and mature for a further five years. It was then bottled and sold as a ten-year-old.

The blend was originally known as “Pat whiskey”, and the labels carried the logo of a man on a green background. This soon lead to the name “Green spot”.

When Jameson moved production from Bow St. to Midleton, the make up of the whiskey altered for the first time in living memory. This coupled with low stocks of maturing whiskey led Mitchell & Son into an agreement with Irish Distillers, whereby the whiskey would be matured by the distillery in their own casks, with Mitchell & Sons having sole rights to market, sell and develop the whiskey.

Current Day Production

The current Green spot is slightly younger than the original. It is a blend of seven and eight year old pot still whiskey, 25% of which has matured in sherry casks.

Only 500 cases, (approximately 6000 bottles) are produced each year, most of this is sold through Mitchell and Son’s shop in Dublin. As a result, it is difficult to obtain outside of Ireland, except in specialist retailers.

Nose: The first thing to strike you is the density of the nose; nothing light and flowery here. The pot still appears older than its eight years thanks to a pleasant dustiness (something similar to old Redbreast), and the influence of the sherry. All this is mixed with a curious menthol sub-stratum. Some evidence of bourbon wood around too, but rather overshadowed by this highly unusual cough-sweet, malty effect.

Taste: Sweet, rich and full bodied from the very start. It quickly fills the mouth with a glorious spiciness. All the time it somehow remains soft, though the tastebuds are constantly tweaked by a harder pot still maltiness. Wonderfully complex and busy.

Finish: Very long, dry and malty to start then sweetens and some late spice adds to all the fun. The very last, dying rays are rather cool on the throat, as if the menthol on the nose has returned.

Comments: This is a tremendous whiskey, sometimes giving a sweet-honey feel more associated with Perthshire malts from Scotland. But the pot still is confident enough to confirm this as Irish with a maturity greater than the age of the whiskey used. If you see it, grab it. It’s too much of a high class one-off to ignore.

Tasting Notes by Jim Murray (reproduced from the Mitchell & Son Website)

Despite a lack of historical evidence, it is believed that troops of King Henry II drank Bushmills some 400 years before the distillery became officially licensed in 1608 by King James I. In 1784 the Bushmills Distillery became an officially registered company. From 1740 to 1910 Irish emigrants to the USA spread the word of Bushmills, as did the product’s wins in international spirit and whiskey competitions.

In the early 1900s, the USA was a very important market for Bushmills (and other Irish Whiskey producers). Prohibition in 1920 came as a large blow to the Irish Whiskey industry, but Bushmills managed to survive. Wilson Boyd, Bushmill’s director at the time, predicted the end of prohibition and had large stores of whiskey ready to export. After the Second World War, the distillery was bought by Isaac Wolfson, and, in 1972, it was taken over by Irish Distillers, meaning that Irish Distillers controlled the production of all Irish whiskey at the time. In June 1988, Irish Distillers was bought by French liquor group Pernod Ricard.

In June 2005, the distillery was bought by Diageo for £200 million. Diageo has significantly increased production at the distillery and hopes to double production by 2011. This is in contrast to the serious neglect that the brand suffered during its time under Irish Distillers, during which the whiskey stocks at Bushmills were severely decreased in order to increase the market share of Jameson Whiskey, which is Irish Distillers’ main brand. Diageo have also announced a large advertising campaign in order to regain a market share for Bushmills.

In May 2008, the Bank of Ireland issued a new series of sterling banknotes in Northern Ireland which all feature an illustration of the Old Bushmills Distillery on the obverse side, replacing the previous notes series which depicted Queen’s University of Belfast.

Jameson 12 Year Old Special Reserve, with its robust full bodied flavour, is a warm welcoming handshake into the Reserves whiskey family. Originally known as ‘1780’ after the year of foundation of the Jameson distillery in Dublin’s Bow Street, it was renamed in 2002 to reflect its minimum 12 years of maturing in bourbon and most delectably in oloroso sherry casks.

With its infusion of pot still with sherry casks, these brush strokes of distilling artistry make it the best known and most popular aged Jameson Reserve for any discerning palate.

Jameson 12 Year Old Special Reserve is a whiskey of great character with complex flavours of toasted wood, spice and sherry that are superbly mellowed. Its exquisite taste celebrates the enduring heritage of great Jameson whiskeys which began in 1780.

Producer’s Tasting Notes