More than a St. Patrick’s Day cliché: Why Irish whiskey deserves your attention

I’ll admit it: When City Pulse asked me to write about Irish whiskey, I had to take a quick inventory of my own liquor cabinet to figure out how little I actually knew. I’ve spent years tasting and reviewing bourbon and rye, touring the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and interviewing the biggest master distillers. But Irish whiskey?

I had three bottles collecting dust on a shelf. I tried the two cheaper ones first and was not impressed. Then I opened a Redbreast 12-Year and thought, “Okay, there’s something to this brown juice.”

As it turns out, there’s quite a history. What most American drinkers and I don’t know is that Irish whiskey isn’t just something you order on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s actually the spirit that gave whiskey its name.

 

A quick history lesson

The word “whiskey” comes from the Irish “uiscé beatha,” meaning “water of life.” Irish monks brought perfume distillation techniques to the island around 1,000 A.D., and by the 12th century, the Irish had repurposed the process to make the first whiskey. Though it looked nothing like what we drink today (barrel aging hadn’t been invented yet), Irish whiskey predates Scotch, bourbon and every other form of whiskey available on your local shelf.

Some credit Kilbeggan Distillery, founded in 1757, as the first licensed distillery. Others point to Bushmills’ 1608 date. Both claims have asterisks, but the point stands: Irish whiskey has a centuries-long history. By the 1700s, the increasing demand led to a decline in quality.

Then came Prohibition in the United States, which dealt a near-fatal blow to the industry, not because distillers could no longer export to the United States but because illicit moonshiners flooded the market with counterfeit expressions, giving Irish whiskey a bad name. For most of the 20th century, Irish whiskey was a category on life support.

The comeback, however, has been remarkable. Over the last few decades, the number of distilleries operating in Ireland has exploded from a handful to over 40, and the demand continues to grow.

 

What makes it Irish

To be legally called Irish whiskey, a spirit must be distilled and matured on the island of Ireland, aged a minimum of three years in wooden casks and bottled at no less than 40% ABV (80 proof). Most Irish whiskeys are triple distilled, meaning they’re run through the still three times instead of the standard two. This strips out impurities, producing a notably cleaner, smoother spirit.

“It’s kind of like the redheaded stepchild of the whiskey world,” Henry Kwok, owner of Henry’s Place in Okemos, said. “If you’re deep in the bourbon world, you kind of miss it.”

Kwok, a bourbon devotee, described Irish whiskey as “very clean, floral, never really high proof, never offensive.” He compared it to vodka in its purity, with the subtle fruit and oak notes of a Scotch.

The comparison to Scotch is apt, but there’s a key difference. Scotch uses peat smoke to dry the malted barley used in production, giving it that distinctive smoky character. Irish whiskey almost never uses peat, which is a big reason it tends to taste lighter and more approachable.

Four styles worth knowing

Not all Irish whiskey is the same. There are four main categories:

Single-pot still: made from a mix of malted and unmalted barley, distilled at a single distillery, and uniquely Irish; you won’t find this style anywhere else in the world.

Single malt: made entirely from malted barley at a single distillery, and similar in concept to Scotch single malts.

Single grain: typically used as a blending component, made from a variety of grains in a column (or “Coffey”) still for a lighter style.

Blended: the most common category, combining two or more of the above styles and accounting for most of the big commercial brands.

Premium expressions often gain their complexity through finishing in a secondary cask after the primary aging period. Sherry casks, port pipes and even cider barrels are common. This is where whiskeys like Redbreast really come alive.

 

So, why does everyone just  drink Jameson?

Jameson is affordable, smooth and ubiquitous. “Jameson is king,” said  Breanna Bauer, category manager for alcohol at Quality Dairy, who has spent 21 years in spirits retail in Lansing. “Nobody’s really touching that.”

Jameson’s mass production via continuous distillation keeps costs down and maintains consistency. Kwok put it bluntly: “When you taste Jameson, you really taste just alcohol. You don’t really taste much flavor.” That’s not necessarily a criticism, since it makes Jameson an ideal mixer and an approachable entry point. But it’s a long way from representing what the category can actually do.

The bottom line is that Irish whiskey was once the most popular spirit on Earth, and based on what’s on shelves and in glasses around Lansing, it’s well on its way to making a comeback.

(James Brains runs Brains Report, a humorous product review website and YouTube channel. He’s also the founder of Lansing Foodies and a former senior reporter for Business Insider, where he covered American whiskey.)