Honey

Writers Tears

Originally created as a boutique blend in 2009, Writer’s Tears is a vatting of 60% single malt and 40% single pot stills, containing no grain except barley. In the subsequent decade, the whiskey has garnered various industry awards and mentions by luminaries such as Jim Murray and Ian Buxton. Writer’s Tears is likely a blend of whiskies from the Cooley and Midleton distilleries. There being only a handful of operating Irish distilleries, though more are in the works, it is quite normal for brands to source their whiskey to order and blend, finish or otherwise finish producing the final product. Like Canadian whisky, finding the source of the actual contents of the bottle can sometimes be challenging. Walsh Distillery began its own distillation in 2016, so we assume that as production continues and their house stock ages, the company’s portfolio will contain more of their own product.

By Adam | August 8, 2018 | Foreign | No Comments |

One could be forgiven if you think this Irish whiskey is masquerading as a Scottish whisky. Only twice distilled, unlike the usual triple distillation of Irish malts, with the barley peated, Connemara is a relatively new whiskey that seems to hearken back to an Islay more than anything. It has done well, winning nearly a dozen competitive awards over the past decade. When the Irish whiskey industry was in full flower a century and more ago, though, there were some that incorporated peat smoked barley (the Scots never had the market cornered on using peat for a fuel source, after all) and it is not horribly unusual to find an Irish whiskey double distilled today, even if it is not the norm. Still, this Connemara expression out of Kilbeggan Distillery, which is owned by the Cooley Distillery, bears the imprint of John Teeling before he sold Cooley to Beam Suntory in 2014. There are cask strength and 12 year offerings available in the United States and other expressions elsewhere in the world.

By Adam | March 17, 2018 | Foreign | No Comments |

The Irish whiskey tradition is every bit as proud – and sometimes convoluted – as their Scottish neighbors to the east. Distilled at the New Middleton Distillery for Irish Distillers, an arm of the Pernod Recard, and distributed by Mitchell & Son of Dublin, keeping track of the Green Spot from barley to bottle can be an adventure in and of itself. Regardless, Green Spot is a bonded whisky and one of the few remaining pot still whiskies left in Ireland, deriving its name from the practice of marking casks of different ages with a spot of colored paint to tell them apart. At one time a 10 year old whiskey, the current iteration is made up of whiskies aged 7-10 years. The whiskey has been steadily popular over the past century and more. An older sibling, the Yellow Spot, is aged in Malaga wine casks.

By Adam | December 5, 2017 | Foreign | No Comments |