The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday
By Richard Thomas
Bushmills 25 Year Old Single Malt
(Credit: Bushmills)
St. Patrick’s Day has grown from being the feast day commemorating the death of Ireland’s patron saint into an international (often unofficial) holiday celebrating all things Irish. There is no better time to expand your knowledge of the surging Irish Whiskey scene and get acquainted with some new expressions. I’ve drawn up a list of seven such new Irish whiskeys, each interesting in its own right and collectively representing the whole price range. Grab your favorite whiskey glass and enjoy!
Blackwater Peat the Magic Dragon Single Malt (€96/$105)
Released only two months ago, this one is as new to shelves as they come. Blackwater Distillery is one of the many craft scale distilleries that have sprung up in Ireland in recent years, located in what used to be a hardware shop on the banks of their namesake, the Blackwater River. Their whimsically named Peat the Magic Dragon is an Irish single malt, single barrel release made with barley that was grown, malted and smoked with peat/turf all on and from the same sight. Blackwater details all this in a way that would make the heart of any militant purist sing. They matured it in a French oak barrel that had seen a previous use aging cherry liqueur. It’s also a rare one: the yield of the one cask was just 350 bottles (and those are 500 ml bottles at that) at 49% ABV. This bottle was only released in Ireland, but the few retailers who still have it ship to the US.
Boann Winter Solstice Preston’s Mash
(Credit: Boann Distillery)
Boann Winter Solstice Preston’s Mashbill (€150/$163)
This one is also brand new, having been released just in the last couple of months. Boann Distillery is located in the Boyne Valley, and what they’ve done is recreate a whiskey using a 140 year old grain recipe from Preston’s, a famous Drogheda negociant from the heyday of Irish Whiskey. What that mash is exactly Boann won’t say, but they put the new make into a Oloroso hogshead for this single barrel, cask strength (59.9% ABV) release. So, Winter Solstice Preston’s Mashbill is also a limited edition with a small production run, and it’s also something you’ll need to acquire as a special import unless you happen to be reading this from Ireland.
Bushmills 25 Year Old Single Malt ($900)
Since St. Paddy’s 2023, the world’s oldest licensed distillery has expanded their permanent line-up with two ultra-aged expressions, a 25 and 30 year old single malt. As the 25 year old is the more approachable of the two, that is the one chosen for this list. Previously (and going back decades), the oldest Bushmills in regular release had been their 21 year old. This whiskey started life as pretty typical Bushmills, spending five years in ex-bourbon and ex-Sherry casks. What sets it apart is it then went on for a dominant, extraordinary secondary maturation of twenty years in first-fill ruby Port pipes. These are available in the US, UK and Europe in the 700 ml format.
Keeper’s Heart 10 Year Old Single Malt ($100)
I will hopefully head off an ignorant comment by stating that while O’Shaughnessy Distillery is in Minnesota, not Ireland, this one is sourced and is an Irish Whiskey. Once we get past that pedigree (because Irish Whiskeys sourced by for a US-based label are pretty rare), this single malt has a more ordinary story: aged for 10 years and finished in Malaga wine casks before bottling at 43% ABV. Just keep in mind the crew behind it includes Brian Nation, former Master Distiller of New Midleton, so O’Shaughnessy certainly has the expertise to do this right.
Method & Madness 7 Year Old Single Malt
(Credit: Irish Distillers)
Method & Madness 7 Year Old Single Malt (€95/$103)
New Midleton is where Jameson, Powers, Redbreast and the Spots are all made, but if you think about those brands, the one thing none of them do is a single malt. It just isn’t something Irish Distillers is known for, so it shouldn’t be surprising that when the company put out a single malt, it came from their experiments Method & Madness brand. Most Method & Madness whiskeys are made in New Midleton’s in-house craft distillery, and this first-ever 7 year old single malt is an example. Aged in ex-bourbon and ex-Sherry casks, it’s bottled at 43% ABV.
Midleton Very Rare Forêt de Tronçais ($5,000)
The very rare, very expensive entry on this list is also from New Midleton. That distillery’s Kevin O’Gorman was their chief wood and maturation specialist before becoming Master Distiller in 2020. It was in that preceding role that O’Gorman was in France in 2017, looking for cask stock. That was when he explored oak from the Tronçais forest in central France, built into casks by the Taransaud cooperage, typically a supplier to the wine and Cognac industries. They made what are called T5 casks for O’Gorman, with that French oak air-seasoned for five years before the cask is made.
The actual whiskey is (like Midleton Very Rare) a marriage of single grain and single pot still whiskeys, drawn from a range of ex-bourbon barrel aged stock distilled between the 1980s and 2000s. Reading between the lines, that means the minimum age on the marriage is over twenty years, and some of the whiskeys could be older than forty years. Then it went to those new T5 casks for an additional three years before bottling at 48% ABV.
Waterford Peated Woodbrook (€94/$104)
Waterford Distillery has taken peated Irish whiskeys to a new level with two new expressions, the first- and second-most peated Irish malts of modern times, with Woodbrook being the title holder. Waterford specializes in relatively young, grain-forward whiskeys that rely on flavorful, estate-grown choices in barley. So, this malt was made with barley from Woodbrook farm in County Dublin. The barley was peated up to 74 ppm, and to put that into perspective, a typical Laphroaig malt is peated to between 40 and 50 ppm. This smoky take on Irish Whiskey is bottled at a healthy 50% ABV.
