More on coffee and Obama

A few pictures have surfaced to illustrate stories I posted previously. Obama's cask of Cooley whiskey appears in an article by Conor O'Clery in The Global Post. It's cask no. 16110, containing 200 litres at 64% ABV (it's normal to mature at a high ABV since the alcohol evaporates as time passes; it will be diluted to the desired strength at the bottling stage).

And here are the manufacturer's snaps of the giant glass made for the assault on the World Record for the largest Irish coffee. An English company called Laboratory Equipment Ltd hand made the 60 litre monster. It's great to see there are still specialist manufacturing companies in these islands that can tackle one-off projects like this.

Research and fact-checking - first casualties of the recession?

Compare these two paragraphs in recent editions of two British newspapers. They are both from articles on the flood of Irish shoppers heading north of the border to exploit the current euro/pound exchange rate.

From The Sunday Times, 8 Feb, 2009:

It's easy to see why: a litre of Jameson Irish whiskey costs £19.99 (€22.85) in Newry, compared to €38.59 in Dunnes Stores, Dublin, the city where it is actually distilled.

From The Daily Telegraph, 27 Feb, 2009:

It's easy to see why. [...] A litre of Jameson Irish whiskey costs the equivalent of 20 euros in Newry and 38 euros in Dublin, the city where it's distilled.

Hmm, different newspapers, different authors, similar phrasing and the same glaring error (Jameson is distilled in Cork, not Dublin). Pure coincidence, no doubt.

Whiskey reviews from around the net (and the Klingon homeworld?)

This article on epicurious matching Irish whiskey with cheeses and other foods is pretty inspiring. The BoozeBasher offers an idiosyncratic review of Bushmills Original while the Whisky Boys tackle Bushmills 10yo single malt. Kevin Erskine is a fan of Irish whiskey as a cocktail base. And finally, Rich Nagle ponders the connection between Clontarf Whiskey and the Klingon language. Qapla'!

It's an uncomfortable fact that I don't report much on those big Irish whiskey brands, Powers and Paddy. The truth is I never hear anything about them. Their stablemate in the Pernod Ricard portfolio, Jameson, gets all the attention.

While Pernod has done a wonderful job selling Jameson to the world and raising the profile of Irish whiskey at home and abroad, Powers and Paddy have languished in the home market.

The three brands were once made by three different companies that merged in the 1960s to form Irish Distillers (IDL). Under the IDL banner they retained their distinctiveness and the allegiances they had built up among whiskey drinkers.

Pernod Ricard took over IDL in 1988 and since then have put their marketing and distribution muscle exclusively behind Jameson. This inevitably had its effect, even in Ireland, where Jameson replaced Powers as the most popular Irish whiskey a few years ago.

I haven't been able to put numbers on this up till now because Powers and Paddy are completely ignored in the Pernod financial reports. But we now have those figures, courtesy of an article in today's Irish Times:

Ten years ago, 225,000 cases of Powers were sold annually in Ireland.

Since then, according to data compiled by International Wine and Spirit Record, Powers sales have declined by almost 40 per cent. ...

The result is that, while in 1998 Powers outsold Jameson in Ireland by 75,000 cases, by 2007 Jameson was outselling Powers by 120,000 cases.

In the same period, Paddy sales declined by 40,000 cases.

The final line echoes the worries we have all had regarding Pernod's stewardship of these heritage brands:

... you have to wonder whether Irish Distillers is adopting the correct strategy with three mass market brands of basically the same product in such a small market.

I'm sure that's how it looks in Paris but an Irish whiskey drinker will tell you that Paddy, Powers and Jameson are very different products, despite being made in the same plant in Midleton. While all three are blends, Powers is the spicy one, with a higher pure pot still content than Jameson. Paddy is the lightest, and contains malt whiskey alongside the grain and pure pot still. All are excellent everyday whiskeys and it would be a tragedy to lose any of them.

The good news reported in the same article is that Irish Distillers is beginning a €500,000 ad campaign in Ireland to boost the profile of Powers. Perhaps Irish drinkers could help the effort to preserve these historic brands by replacing the Jameson in their glasses by Paddy or Powers.

It was only three months ago I was posting a picture of an enormous glass of Irish coffee. But the Buena Vista Café's world record has already been toppled. The World's Largest Irish Coffee was made and consumed on Friday, in Cardiff, in the run up to CeltFest 2009. (Thank you to Dwyer McClorey for drawing my attention to this.)

Diageo (Bushmills) sponsored the attempt, and contributed 13 litres of their own spirit. And this time there is a video...

Since we are on the topic of coffee, I must congratulate friend of Irish Whiskey Notes, Colin Harmon, who became the 2009 Irish Barista Champion this week. I know Colin from the Science of Taste and Aroma class I took last year so I like to think I had something to do with his rise to fame :-)

The big whiskey story in 2007 was the recommencement of distillation at Kilbeggan after a pause of more than 50 years. Cooley bought the old distillery (which by this time had become a museum) in 1988 as a place to mature its own whiskey. But the intention was there from the beginning to eventually bring the distillery back to full operation.

The all important stills were gone from Kilbeggan but Cooley managed to source replacements from the defunct B. Daly distillery in Tullamore. It ended up with one small and three large copper pot stills, and a copper column still.

The small pot still was restored, a boiler installed, and production resumed on the site on March 19th, 2007. Since there is only one pot, the first stage of distillation happens at Cooley's main plant in Louth and the "low wines" are transported to Kilbeggan where they receive the second, and final, distillation.

While the result naturally shares much of its character with spirit distilled entirely at Cooley, the smaller pot still produces a lighter spirit. The first matured whiskey from this still might be ready for release as early as 2011.

In early April Cooley expects to take delivery of a new still at Kilbeggan. It has been made by Forsyths of Scotland to much the same design as the existing still, including the distinctive rivetting. It will be larger though - 3,000l capacity compared to the 2,000l of the old still.

Mashing and fermentation will continue to take place at Cooley but now the wash will be taken directly to Kilbeggan where it will first be distilled in the new, larger pot, then in the old one. At some point, it is intended to distil three times by using the new still twice.

There was a run on the spirit stocks of Bowes pub last Thursday evening when forty or so whiskey buffs turned up to launch the Irish Whiskey Society. Michael Foggarty, honorary Irishman (like his compatriot, John Jameson) and tireless whiskey advocate, had brought us all there. He kicked off proceedings by telling us that the whole world was watching as we finally set right the national embarrassment of not having our own whiskey club.

There were plenty of faces familiar from tastings, and others who brought welcome expertise in the making and selling of whiskey. Much of the evening was spent getting to know those we hadn't met before, the conversation oiled by the generous gift of a couple of Tyrconnell finishes from Cooley.

An ad hoc committee was set up to pull together some of the paraphernalia that a society needs, like mailing lists, articles of association and proposals for membership fees. A shiny new online forum is in the works too so the membership can get cracking on generating ideas and dreaming about society bottlings.

Meetings of the Irish Whiskey Society will take place on the last Thursday of every month at 7pm. So on February 26th we should all be back in Bowes again for round two. If there are any updates in the meantime, I'll be sure to mention them here.

By the way, I was scooped by JC Skinner over here :-)