The social drinker

I’ve been killing time in a lot of airport duty-free shops lately. More often than not, the whiskey section has been populated by smiling assistants handing out samples from the newly opened Pearse Lyons Distillery in the centre of Dublin.

Pearse Lyons, who sadly died recently, was one of the most interesting men in the Irish drinks world; he was a US-based billionaire entrepreneur made his money from animal medicines in the United States, and in later life began ploughing back some of that money into distilling both Irish whiskey and bourbon, craft-brewing and distribution.

His most recent venture was the opening of a distillery in a disused church; it’s located close to the Jameson Distillery, the Teeling Distillery, and the Guinness Hop Store in the Liberties, helping to create a cluster of visitor attractions in the city centre aimed at drinkers.

With an undoubted flair for business, Lyons knew that distribution networks are the most important part of the business, and he appeared to have made sure that his own whiskies are available in the world’s biggest markets, even if they can still be somewhat difficult to locate here in Ireland.

So what sort of whiskey did this experienced businessman with a love for the drinks industry create in order to conquer the world?

Lyons’s basic offering, Pearse The Original, pictured below, is a blended whiskey, made of malt and grain whiskies that have been aged somewhere between three and five years. The light, smooth blend is mellow, with a light honey aroma that is recognisably Irish, but also somehow seems to owe something to the experience Lyons gained from making bourbon across the Atlantic. It is, in short, a really good whiskey, and too good to be left to the world’s army of duty-free drinkers. It deserves to be more widely available here as well.