Irish whiskey: The story of survival, revival

Legend says St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. What drove out the distillers? That’s a more complex tale. (And a truer one, since archaeological records indicate Ireland never had any snakes.)

It once had more than 1,000 distillers, though, ranging from those running tiny farm stills making poitin (think Irish moonshine) to some of the largest distilleries in the world. Despite a long history of taxation by the British, Irish whiskey survived, and by the mid-1800s, Irish distilleries were making whiskey that the world wanted to drink.

Yet between that time and the 1940s, a series of trials and tribulations all but crushed Irish whiskey, dropping the number of commercial distillers in the country to three.

How the category not only survived but also staged a comeback is a story that should have whiskey lovers raising an appreciative dram. New distilleries are popping up around the country, there is talk of a boom and many young makers are preserving the best traditions while exploring new directions.

“It’s quite incredible the different corners of the world that Irish whiskey was found in,” says Carol Quinn, archivist for Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, which produces some of the best-known brands, including Jameson, Powers and Redbreast. “In 1905, if you’re in Cairo, you can get a glass of Powers Irish whiskey, no problem whatsoever. At the same time, Jameson was selling enough in Honolulu that they actually had a specific label for Honolulu printed up. We have records from Uruguay, New Zealand, Australia, Canada — you name it, and Irish whiskey is being sold there . ... It’s a global drink at that point.”

What’s more, Quinn says, “it was a high-quality, highstatus drink. If you were the type of person who enjoyed fine cognac or a good champagne, you drank Irish whiskey, and you expected to pay a little more for it, because you knew you were drinking a luxury product.”

The early 20th century brought major challenges: Prohibition in America not only closed off a major market, but it also damaged Irish whiskey’s reputation, Quinn says. Some bootleggers were falsely selling under an “Irish whiskey” label because they knew they could charge more. Americans who tried this probably found it “foul, fiery and burning,” which made it more challenging for the real whiskey to come back after the 18th Amendment was repealed.

Irish whiskey hung on, but a trade war between Ireland and the United Kingdom in the 1930s was disastrous, “because that’s when you lose all the markets associated with the British Empire,” Quinn says.

Other whiskey-making countries, especially Scotland, gained market share with their blended expressions, while in Ireland, distillery after distillery closed down. In 1966, the three remaining Irish companies, John Jameson, John Power and Cork, merged to form Irish Distillers and consolidated their production; in 1988, Irish Distillers became a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard. That 1966 merger and the later acquisition — which gave the company access to Pernod Ricard’s global marketing capacity — did a lot to get Irish whiskey back on a path to survival.

So did John Teeling, who in the late 1980s, after years of planning and work, ended Irish Distillers’ longtime monopoly when he launched Cooley Distillery. His sons, Stephen and Jack, went on to launch Teeling Whiskey, initially using stocks of Cooley’s whiskey, after Cooley sold to booze giant Beam Suntory in 2012. Teeling is the first new distillery in Dublin in 125 years.

Now, says Stephen Teeling, “we’re trying to revive some of the heritage and innovative ways in which Irish whiskey is made going back generations,” while also trying to make it relevant for newer whiskey consumers by innovating with different grains (the mash bill) and aging in different types of casks.

Irish whiskey, Teeling says, “went from 60 percent of the world’s whiskey market to just 1 percent in the ’80s. It was just devastating. . . . But since Pernod Ricard has come in and a few other new innovations, Irish whiskey has been the fastest-growing grain spirit in the world, really blazing a trail . . . in the U.S., it’s been growing double digits for the last 10, 15 years.” In fact, according to DISCUS, since 2003, gross revenue for Irish whiskey is up more than 1,000 percent, with the biggest gains at the high end of the category.