By Richard Thomas Rating: C Sometimes Irish whiskey is parsed along sectarian lines, and with its distillery in County Antrim of Northern Ireland, Bushmills is firmly on the protestant side of that whiskey divide. The Bushmills Old Distillery Company opened in the 1780s, and while it has suffered from periodic closures during its storied history, it remains the oldest licensed ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Jameson 18 Year Old Limited Reserve is billed as the “elder statesmen” of the line by the distillery, and it is certainly the most rarefied bottle of whiskey Jameson produces. Given that Jameson is arguably at the forefront of Irish whiskey labels (it is certainly the most famous), Jameson 18 Year is at the forefront ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ It used to be that there were only two choices in Irish whiskey, Catholic (Jameson’s) and Protestant (Bushmills). Yes, there were always many more labels than just those big two on the market, but these were always very hard to find just about anywhere outside of the British Isles. Clontarf changed all that, and Clontarf’s ...