Jay Bradley - The Man with Whiskey in his DNA
FOUNDER OF CRAFT IRISH WHISKEY CO. AND CO-FOUNDER OF WHISKEY & WEALTH CLUB
The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. is the first and only rare and collectable Irish whiskey company to cask at 52% ABV. They create limited “Rare Release” craft whiskies, and each release is numbered and highly collectable.
Whiskey is of the shamrock, not the thistle
The founder, Jay Bradley, became a whiskey advocate after reading a book called ‘Truths about Whisky,’ published in 1879. It explained how The Liberties in Dublin (where he was born), an area in the centre of the city, was the epicentre of global whiskey. Dublin whiskey was known as the ‘gold standard’ spirit at the time. He studied the history of Irish whiskey and learned that it had declined in production since 1914 due to geo-political issues such as World Wars, civil wars and embargos beyond the Irish whiskey distilleries’ control.*
Business Acumen
While Jay left school as a 14-year-old teenager without a formal education, Jay devoured books, courses and insights from business gurus like Tony Robbins, Jim Collins and Michael Gerber to fully grasp business theory. He attended seminar after seminar in his spare time and read MBA course work at night. Meanwhile he held down two jobs, where he was an apprentice furniture maker by day and rose from bottle washer to bar manager at night. After setting up various businesses, Jay eventually owned a cocktail bar with a smokehouse restaurant – Jay was perplexed to find that when he looked at his spirit shelf in his own bar, that he stocked over 12 Scottish whiskies, six bourbons and three Japanese whiskies, yet only two Irish. Jay likes to dine at high-end restaurants, where he noticed the same trend on nearly every menu. There are no great single malt Irish whiskies represented globally, which got him wondering why that was the case.
This set him on a personal mission to create and promote the luxury and craft side of Irish whiskey. It is a journey that has seen the coming together of the greatest exponents of the whiskey craft to rediscover old secrets and invoke the new.
Like Father Like Son
His father was a very skilled cook and a serial entrepreneur who came from a long line of serial entrepreneurs, with the main business centred on a chain of butchers’ shops. It was here that Jay’s father learned the family trade of spice blending, elevating it to an art form. He implicitly understood seasoning and combinations of flavour. He also cooked for the family, so whilst Jay was not heir to a whiskey dynasty, the Bradley kitchen table was a masterclass of flavour and a temple to the five senses. It was here that Jay learned about the interplay of sight, sound, aroma, touch and taste.
Understanding meat, barbequing became a passion for Jay, and he has won multiple first place trophies and even competed at the World Championships as a pitmaster. The art of barbeque has taught him about the importance of wood in building flavour breadth and complexity. He studied the constituents of wood to understand the flavours that can be extracted from it; the lignin (cell walls of bark) and hemicellulose (in plant cell walls) and how the wood reacted with heat. Whiskey comes off the still clear as water - a lot of its flavour and 100% of its colour comes from the wood.
A few years ago, Jay’s father sadly fell ill with cancer, and Jay deprioritised work to be by his side and it was over a late night whiskey, fantasising with his father that the foundations of his whiskey companies were born. His epicurean late father used to say that Irish whiskey was consistently better in taste and quality than other whiskeys, and coming from a country that has strong roots in whiskey-making, Jay decided to build on their dream creating a premium Irish whiskey brand- The Craft Irish Whiskey Co.
Craft Irish Whiskey Co. & Whiskey & Wealth Club Were Born
The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. which is based in Dublin, Ireland, crafts and sells ultra-premium craft Irish whiskey procured from all corners of Ireland. Their spirits embody the traditions of Irish whiskey but have a unique signature full-bodied quality.
His other company, Whiskey & Wealth Club offers private individuals access to the rarefied world of wholesale premium cask whiskey ownership. They have opened up a sector once reserved only for a select group of industry insiders. Their private investors can tap into the booming global whiskey market; to buy, hold and sell on for profit; or simply to bottle and enjoy.