Whiskey galore! How we beat the Scotch
... while the French kept our spirits up
IVISITED the Bow Street distillery not long after it closed down. I was 13 and had developed a somewhat surprising interest in industrial Victoriana, so Irish Distillers’ public relations officer, the dapper Ted Bonner, whom older readers might remember as a stalwart of the early Late Late Show, organised a visit.
It was a sorry sight, that great complex of nineteenth century industrial buildings, once as busy as the Guinness brewery, now lying still, and already, in 1973, starting slowly to decay.
There was still an aroma of whiskey as the last casks of Jameson distilled there aged in one of the warehouses.
I returned there, much older and probably not much wiser, a few weeks ago and Bow Street gladdened my heart. Not only is the €11million Jameson Experience visitor centre very busy and highly impressive, whiskey is being aged there once again for the first time in over 40 years.
Admittedly, it’s a small quantity in the context of Irish Distillers’ output – Jameson is now one of the biggest spirit brands in the world – but it’s very special, a blend of whiskeys at least 18 years old, distilled in Midleton but allowed to ‘marry’ in fragrantly spicy ex-Bourbon barrels deep in the Bow Street complex.
This rare whiskey is at cask strength (55.3% abv – alcohol by volume) and is all about smoothness, vanilla spiciness, with a touch of something like salted caramel. And the finish? The taste seems to be infinite.
ACOUPLE of dozen of us wine and spirits writers were confronted with the constituent parts of the whiskey – pot still and grain, aged in different kinds of cask – and asked to try to recreate the stunning Jameson Bow Street 18. Having tasted even the best of our efforts, Irish Distillers’ Master Blender, Billy Leighton, concluded that his job was definitely safe!
At €240 a bottle, this is far from the most expensive Irish whiskey but it is, indeed, very special, not least in being the first Jameson to finish its ageing process in the city that gave birth to that famous brand. And Jameson really is a famous brand these days, the whiskey that is converting the world to Irish.
The history of Irish whiskey, especially the recent part, is complex and fascinating and it is dealt with entertainingly but thoroughly by Peter Mulryan in his The Whiskeys Of Ireland, published by the O’Brien Press.
But one simple fact is that Irish whiskey boomed in the latter half of the nineteenth century; it was a vastly significant export, consumed around the globe but especially throughout the then British Empire and the United States. Dublin pot still whiskey was regarded as the finest in the world, and the Irish style, warm and round and pleasingly soft, was preferred to the generally rougher, sharper Scotch.
Ireland had dozens of distilleries at the turn of the last century. Ironically, it was an Irishman, Aeneas Coffey, who gave Scotch a boost. He invented the continuous or patent still that was cheaper to run than the traditional pot still. The Scotch industry adopted the new technology while the Irish stuck with tradition so Scotch enjoyed a price advantage.
The real blow to Irish whiskey, however, came with Prohibition in the US. Because Irish whiskey was a premium product, bootleggers cynically labelled their moonshine as Irish and soon our whiskey was thought to be rough and nasty.
By the time the US came to its senses about alcohol, the damage had been done. After World War II, when the British were pumping investment into the Scotch industry as a dollar earner, its Irish counterpart was on its last legs.
Such distilleries as were still struggling on by the 1960s – Jameson, Power’s and Cork – had no option but to join forces as a commercial alliance.
As the State marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 rebellion, they became, first, the United Distillers of Ireland and then rebranded as Irish Distillers.
Two years later it was decided, reluctantly, to shut down all of the existing distilleries and to create a brand new one beside the old Cork Distilleries plant in Midleton. In 1975 Midleton opened and by 1976, all of the old distilleries in the Republic had ceased production. This huge change was preceded by a smaller but significant one.
Jameson was chosen as the flagship brand.
Shortly afterwards the Canadian drinks giant Seagram took a stake in Irish Distillers, in exchange for buying Bushmills in Co. Antrim, thus bringing all the surviving whiskey brands under the same ownership. It was thought that Seagrams’ friendly ownership of 15% of Irish Distillers would keep the spectre of a hostile takeover at bay, but it was not to be.
For various reasons, Seagrams sold its stake in 1986.
Even though Irish whiskey was vastly dependent on the domestic market and represented a mere 1% of world sales, a joint effort by Cantrell & Cochrane and Gilbey’s – in effect, by their owners AlliedLyons, Guinness and Grand Metropolitan – was made to take over Irish Distillers. This consortium believed that the Irish Distillers brands should be divided up between the bidders and, with this, the Irish whiskey monopoly would end. Irish Distillers thought otherwise and when French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard came forward with a friendly and rather generous takeover bid, it was quickly accepted. The price was £4.50 as against the competing final offer of £4 a share from the other side.
Like the founding fathers of Irish Distillers, Pernod-Ricard decided to keep Jameson as the flagship.
It was selling fewer than half-amillion cases a year, virtually all of that in Ireland.
But the French knew that Jameson could be used to wow the American market.
So convinced were they that Jameson had vast potential that they eventually offloaded Bushmills to Diageo, the company that owns Guinness who, in turn have since sold it to José Cuervo of Tequila fame. Diageo’s unenthusiastic approach to Bushmills had proven that it was no match for Pernod-Ricard’s strategy with Jameson on the world market.
LAST year, Jameson accounted for 6.5million of the almost 10million cases of Irish whiskey sold worldwide. Clearly our whiskey renaissance is down to the hard work of several players at this stage; there are now 18 distilleries actually producing, and more under construction or planning.
But it was Pernod-Ricard’s stubborn faith in the national spirit, at a time when it was all but written off, that has delivered a remarkable prize for this country: that Irish whiskey is now the fastest growing spirit in the world.
Who knows what would have happened if Pernod-Ricard had been outbid? Guinness and Grand Metropolitan became Diageo and their stewardship of Bushmills did little or nothing for Irish whiskey.
It’s a reflection of how globalised the world has become that we should be grateful to a French company for saving a unique part of our heritage, for preserving traditional parts of it, developing others, and claiming for Irish whiskey its rightful place in the world of fine drinks.
As the Irish whiskey renaissance gathers even greater momentum with the opening of new distilleries, both big and small, it’s worth reflecting that as recently as the 1980s, a lot of people thought that Pernod-Ricard were mad.
In fact, they were simply inspired by a glorious product and then kept faith with it.
I think a joint toast is called for. Santé and Sláinte!