New Irish Whiskeys To Go On The Lash With For St. Paddy’s Day

By Richard Thomas

(Credit: Irish Distillers)

If any part of world whiskey is booming bigger than bourbon, it must be Irish Whiskey. When I started The Whiskey Reviewer, there were still just four distilleries in Ireland (and that only if you count the North as part of Ireland; in whiskey terms, we always do): Bushmills, Cooley, Kilbeggan and Midleton. By the end of 2018, that number had tripled, supporting a tidal wave of new expressions.

According to DISCUS, the U.S. trade lobbying group, Americans are imbibing more of that Irish Whiskey than ever before. But that thirst for Hiberian spirits is about as worldwide as partying on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, so wherever you are, a good way to try on your green and celebrate Irishness is to snag a bottle or a pour of some new (new, not young) Irish Whiskey.

All the bottles here were released since St. Patrick’s Day last year, making them perfect for St. Patrick’s Day 2019. Moreover, I checked each expression while drawing up this list, and everything on it is available with an online retailer who ships internationally.

Jameson Bow Street 18 Year Old Cask Strength
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Green Spot Chateau Montelena ($115): One of the things the folks at Irish Distillers have been doing in recent years is taking Green Spot, their most basic single pot still whiskey, and give it a spell of finishing. In 2018, they put a batch of ex-bourbon and ex-Sherry cask matured pot still whiskey and gave it a year’s worth of secondary maturation in French Oak, Zinfandel wine casks from Chateau Montelena in the Napa Valley. The finish brought out the fruity side of pot still whiskey to a greater degree.

Jameson Bow Street 18 Year Old Cask Strength ($230): Irish Distillers discontinued their original 18 Year Old expression, but then reintroduced a version of it to celebrate the original Dublin distillery of Jameson Irish Whiskey, which is now a tourist attraction. This new 18 Year Old is bottled at cask strength (the first bottling was 53.5% ABV) and available around the world. As is often the case, boosting the strength into the low 50s made everything about the whiskey better, and the 18 Year Old already had a substantial fan base.

JJ Corry Irish Whiskey ($75): Founded in 2015, Chapel Gate Irish Whiskey set out to reestablish the old practice of “bonding.” There have been plenty of sourced brands in Ireland, but these were very much like their cousins in America in that they were based on already aged stocks. What a bonder does is buy new whiskey and take charge of its aging themselves. Even Mitchell & Son of Dublin, creators of Green, Yellow and Red Spot, haven’t aged the whiskey themselves since the 1970s.

Because Chapel Gate has only been around for a few years, they aren’t selling whiskey they have aged from start to finish themselves, but they have blended a whiskey of their own, and they have told us quite a bit about that blend (albeit not where the whiskey came from): 5% 26 year old single malt, 27.5% 11 year old single malt, 27.5% 15 year old single malt and the remaining 40% is 7 year old single grain whiskey. This was bottled at 46% ABV.

Kilbeggan Small Batch Rye ($35): Both Kilbeggan and Cooley are owned by Beam Suntory, and it is known that a lot of the whiskey that goes into Kilbeggan brand whiskeys are made at Cooley, rather than the historic and picturesque Kilbeggan Distillery. However, the new Small Batch Rye is the first whiskey distilled and aged entirely at Kilbeggan, a special note just to start with.

Another special note is the grain recipe, inspired by a style of Irish whiskey-making that disappeared in the early 20th Century. This isn’t a rye whiskey by American standards, as it has a rye content of just 30%, with the rest being a mix of malted and unmalted barley. Instead, it should be seen as a spin on the Irish pot still style, with rye added to that signature national recipe of malted and unmalted barley. The result is said to be a thick, oily whiskey that plays up the spicy side of pot still whiskey. Kilbeggan Small Batch Rye is (in the Cooley style) double distilled, and bottled at 43% ABV.

Pearse Founder’s Choice
12 Year Old Single Malt
(Credit: Alltech)

Pearse Founder’s Choice 12 Year Old Single Malt ($60): Dr. Pearse Lyons, the late founder of Alltech, started his whiskey endeavors in the United States, but soon expanded those ambitions back to his native Ireland. Even though Lyons had previously been making whiskey at a Carlow County brewery before the Pearse Lyons Distillery in Dublin opened in 2017, the 12 year age statement on this single malt marks it out as a sourced whiskey. It’s a fruity, refreshing Irish single malt, and I’d mark it down as the perfect thing to sip on for your St. Paddy’s day drinking.

Proper No. 12 Irish Whiskey ($25): Conor McGregor’s whiskey suffered at the hands of critics as badly as he did in the ring at the hands of Floyd Mayweather. That said, the man has fans and his whiskey got a big marketing push, so you will probably see it everywhere this weekend. My advice is simple: give it a try as a substitute for regular Jameson, Powers, Paddy or Tullamore Dew. You might be satisfied with it on that scale, drinking it alongside a mug of green beer.

Red Spot 15 Year Old Single Pot Still ($150): To much cheering from Irish Whiskey fans, Irish Distillers reintroduced the Red Spot Single Pot Still Whiskey expression last year, five decades after it was discontinued. The foundations for this comeback were laid in the early 2000s, when a consignment of marsala wine casks were imported from Sicily. Pot still whiskey aged in these casks has been combined with whiskeys aged more traditionally in ex-bourbon barrels and ex-Sherry casks, all of it 15 years or older, and bottled at 46% ABV.

Make no mistake: the new Red Spot was the hottest release of 2018 that you can actually buy without too much trouble (it wasn’t a unicorn like the 32 Year Old Redbreast Dream Cask). For my part, I will be in Ireland again in May and plan to snag a bottle.

Teeling Single Pot Still Whiskey
(Credit: Teeling Whiskey Company)

Teeling Single Pot Still Whiskey ($65): Irish Whiskey’s 1970s nadir reduced the number of distilleries in the country down to just two, and the number making pot still whiskey down to just one: New Midleton. That number grew to three in the 1980s with the opening of Cooley, but Cooley didn’t make pot still whisky. It took the modern Irish distillery building boom to widen the production of pot still whiskey, first at Dingle in 2017 and then with Dublin’s Teeling Whiskey Company, when they released Batch 1 of its blue-labeled Teeling Single Pot Still in 2018.

Made from half malted and half unmalted barley, aged for the minimum of three years in virgin oak, ex-bourbon and ex-wine casks, and bottled at 46% ABV, the whiskey is a milestone in Irish Whiskey’s modern revival and quite the item for an enthusiast to get a hold of. If you see it this weekend, absolutely give it a try.