Proper No. 12 Irish Whiskey Review

By Andrew Graham

Rating: C

I am an outlier among Millennials in that I frequently have to Google celebrities to find out who they are, so learning that MMA fighter and boxer Conor McGregor is behind Proper No. 12, a new Irish whiskey, didn’t set me up with any particularly elevated expectation for the spirit.

Instead, I gave it an objective chance. And if this whiskey clears any bar at all, it is the low one of being not altogether different from the other blended Irish whiskeys that are more often deferred to than sought out. “Is there Green Spot? No? I guess Bushmill’s, then.”

Before the tasting notes, let’s talk for a moment about how people actually behave. A week after my wife and I and some friends initially tasted Proper No. 12 for this review, I had a glass of it on the rocks with bitters and lemon peel. This is probably closer to the way an ordinary drinker of this kind of spirit would consume it in the real world, and it was good. But practically all Irish whiskeys are good when prepared this way, and I would credit Angostura bitters, which is magic that adds an extra layer of flavor to well spirits, and my corner market that always has good lemons for 50 cents apiece for this, before crediting the whiskey.

The value, then, of Proper No. 12 is in the celebrification of the whiskey, not in the whiskey itself. No one is jumping up and down, demanding another down-market Irish whiskey, but there is more than enough demand for McGregor as a celebrity to justify its existence, as evidenced by his $85m paycheck for fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017 and his many lucrative revenue streams as an athlete-slash-pitchman.

Proper No. 12 is unremarkable and ordinary in exactly the way you would expect a celebrity boxer’s whiskey to be. It unfortunately does not exist to assault the palate with new qualities worthy of appreciation. It exists to be marketed at McGregor fans. And that will be enough for the many people who will buy it and order it.

Nevertheless, here’s what we got when drinking it neat, and then with a few drops of water.

The Whiskey

Color: A few shades darker than the pale gold of other Irish whiskeys. Gold with a rustwater tint.

Nose: Very floral, with notes of straw, cut grass, and powder. It smelled hotter than I would expect from a 40% ABV whiskey. This was encouraging—I like hot spirits—but I couldn’t find any of the apple, caramel, or vanilla notes that I tend to associate with blended Irish whiskey at this price point.

Flavor:  Here, there was some pretty decent green apple flavor immediately, with toasted sunflower seeds and wet sticks behind it. I still couldn’t find any vanilla notes that Irish whiskeys tend to feature.

And then, the biggest downside to this whiskey’s flavor. There was a quality to the sweetness of it that seems inauthentic, like aspartame or saccharin, the additives that replace real sugar in diet soda. There was an emptiness to its flavor. I don’t know what might have led to this, but it was hard to ignore.

Finish: There was no real complexity once down. The finish, unlike the nose, is not particularly hot; it was rather gentle and airy going down, and that’s even without diluting it with water or ice.  None of the flavor sticks around.

I guess one could call this ”easy-drinking” or “smooth” based on these qualities. I call it passive and lacking in assertiveness.

The Price
The suggested retail price from the manufacturer is $25, and the press materials say it sells for “up to $30.”

Proper No. 12 does score extra points for donating profits — $5 per every case sold, up to $1m annually in total — to local first responder organizations and charities. I can support any legitimate charitable activity from a for-profit business, and I would personally keep Proper No. 12 around for mixed drinks and cocktails for this reason alone. But not because it is particularly good drinking.