Drink! Irish whiskey for £6,500
IRELAND’S first female whiskey entrepreneur has launched a £6,500 bottle as the industry surges worldwide.
Louise McGuane’s company JJ Corry has made 100 bottles of The Chosen, a 27-year-old single cask, single malt Irish whiskey that comes in a handmade wooden cabinet.
McGuane, 42, started JJ Corry in 2015 after 20 years in marketing travelling the world for drinks giants Diageo, Moet Hennessy and Pernod Ricard.
She has not set up a distillery but has revived ‘whiskey bonding’, where whiskies from elsewhere are matured and blended in Ireland. It was common in the early 20th century, but vanished in the 1930s when the market was taken over by Scotch.
McGuane has spent years collecting her own ‘library’ of flavours to use. She said: ‘We have some of the finest mature stock whiskey in the world and yet I feel the industry undersells itself. I wanted to change that. Irish whiskey had a difficult time for about 100 years, but there’s a lot more variety coming in now.
‘In a few years’ time there’ll be a categorical rise in the popularity of whiskey – it’s already happened in America and it is happening here.’
The Chosen is JJ Corry’s ninth whiskey and it is launched as global Irish whiskey sales rose 300pc in ten years with more than 10m bottles sold last year.
Cheers: Founder Louise McGuane (centre) with executives Niamh McMahon and Blaise Kelly