Hungarian whiskey

Half of the Irish Whiskey Society committee was lured to Hungary during the summer by one of our number, a native of that land, the famous Zoltan Vari. Naturally, given our shared interest in whiskey, we took the chance to inspect much of Hungary's fermented and distilled output while there.

Hungarian wine is well-known (and very, very good) and we were prepared to encounter the local distilled hooch, palinka, too. What we didn't expect to find was whiskey.

We stopped in the town of Békés, to tour its palinka factory. Palinka is kind of a fruit brandy, typically unaged and sold in various guises - perhaps on its own, or in a bottle with macerating fruit or blended with honey. It can be made from many types of fruit like plum, apricot, raspberry, etc. Home distillation is not allowed in Hungary but it is common to ferment your own alcohol and then have it distilled at the local palinka factory. We tried a couple of these homemade versions on our trip.

It's a very traditional drink in Hungary. One range of commercial palinkas mentioned in the leaflet I have here is "Palinka for pig killing feast (strong)".

The particular distillery we visited has a picturesque steam engine outside:



Until a few years ago, this engine provided the steam to heat the distillery's pot stills. The logo of the company still incorporates a steam engine.

Here are those pot stills:


For small batches of spirit these are used. The palinka is double-distilled. There is also a column still for larger-scale production.

This distillery seemed to be very willing to experiment. Maturation in glass with fruit for a few months seems routine but here they were testing out cask maturation too. They had both white wine oak casks and casks made from mulberry wood.


The owner of the distillery looked at his stills and looked at his casks and realised he was only a sack of barley short of making whiskey. So he acquired some malted barley, distilled it and filled it into casks. He did this for a few years. The casks had been sitting there quietly for between 7 and 10 years when we chanced across them - genuine Hungarian whiskey. Since it was just an experiment, the whiskey has never been bottled and there is no plan for its sale.

Naturally we wanted a taste so were allowed to extract a sample there and then. It was certainly unusual. The overwhelming note I got on the nose and taste was rice cakes. It was not unpleasant.

They were happy to let us take a whole bottle back to Dublin. We had a "cask strength" tasting coming up in July and this would be a bonus mystery dram. An embargo was placed on mentioning this unknown whiskey before the tasting so that is why I did not write about it at the time.

At the Irish Whiskey Society the reaction was mixed. Some did not like it at all but quite a few indicated they would take a bottle if it was not too expensive. It's certainly a curiosity. And perhaps a future competitor to Irish whiskey?

Tyrconnell AN Mallorcan Wine Cask Finish

Just released last week, this is a 10-year old Tyrconnell single malt aged normally in an ex-bourbon cask then transferred for the final 16 months to a wine cask for "finishing". It's 46%, non-chill filtered. Just one cask of this was bottled, though there is one more awaiting a similar fate. Here are the two casks sitting in the warehouse at Cooley:

Malt maturing in Mallorcan wine casks.

They were supplied by the Celtic Whiskey Shop which stocks the wine these casks once held. It's a red wine, from the Ànima Negra winery, on Mallorca, and it spends one year in oak before bottling.

The Irish Whiskey Society had an exclusive preview of this whiskey at our last tasting. We polished off two bottles and it was comfortably voted the favourite whiskey of the night.

Cooley have released some great 10yo finished Tyrconnells in the past (The port is my favourite, followed by the madeira; there is also a sherry). This red wine finish might be the best yet.

The shop's tasting notes describe it thus:

Incredibly complex aromas of rose, fruit cake, marzipan, honey, ginger bread, and rum 'n' raisin ice cream! The palate is chewy and mouthfilling with flavours of fruitcake, all spice, vanilla, chocolate fudge. A superb finish with dominant vanilla and red fruit flavours.

It's certainly as flavourful as it sounds. Interesting to me was a finish reminiscent of sherry. This, apparently, is down to the European oak which imparts quite a different flavour to whiskey than the American oak of bourbon casks. This sherry effect is quite restrained and pleasant here. It can overwhelm whiskey sometimes.

I hope there will be more of this red wine style in the future. The winery claimed half of the output of about 360 bottles so there is little enough on sale at the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dublin (for €70 a pop). There is another cask, as I mentioned, though it is bound to taste a little different.

The emptied cask is due to be filled again this week. The wood will have a diminished effect this time around but maturation could be extended to compensate. It will be very interesting to compare two whiskeys from the one cask, a rare opportunity indeed.

And, for fans of finishes, there is more good news: the Celtic Whiskey Shop has two sherry finishes in the works at Cooley - one Palo Cortado and one Amontillado. They were filled earlier this year.

Writers Tears

A rather elegant and mysterious new whiskey appeared in the shops last year: Writers Tears, from the previously unknown Writers Tears Whiskey Company. It turns out that this whiskey did not spring fully-formed from the void but can trace its pedigree to The Irishman whiskey line-up.

The Irishman whiskeys are the inspired creations of Bernard Walsh. Bernard enjoys privileged access to the warehouses of certain Irish distillers from where he selects the casks that are vatted together to produce his whiskeys. Some years ago he came up with an entirely new type of whiskey: a blend of malt and pure pot still (PPS) whiskeys. This is a "pot still blend", since both malt and PPS are distilled in the traditional pot still. All other Irish blends contain some proportion of grain whiskey, the output of the less traditional Coffey still.

We see from the Writers Tears label that it is one of these pot still blends. The label goes on to describe the contents as "a style of whiskey popular in Joyce's Dublin". Grain whiskey is thoroughly uncontroversial these days but in the early twentieth century (ie Joyce's era) it was a different story. The major Irish distillers like John Jameson were horrified by the thought of a spirit produced by a vulgar industrial process being passed off as "whiskey". So they refused to adopt the Coffey still or to lighten their whiskeys with grain spirit. Writers Tears, which also eschews grain whiskey, harks back to that "golden age" of traditional pot distillation.

I don't know the precise ratio of PPS to malt in Writers Tears but there is more PPS here than there was in the earlier Irishman 70 (which had 30% PPS to 70% malt). It is aged entirely in ex-Bourbon casks and its light toffee hue is entirely natural.

Remarkably, for a 40% ABV whiskey, Writers Tears is not chill-filtered. Chill-filtration removes some of the suspended components in whiskey that are prone to clumping together at low temperatures, giving the whiskey a hazy appearance. It doesn't affect the taste, but it's considered a cosmetic defect so manufacturers filter out these components before bottling.

The trouble with chill-filtration is that it's the suspended and dissolved components that give a whiskey its individual taste. They speak of the original grain and the process the whiskey underwent - fermentation, distillation, maturation - before it reached the bottle. To remove some of these components is to risk diminishing the character of the whiskey.

Bernard Walsh puts the whiskey first. Although it means that some markets will not accept the whiskey, he has bypassed the chill-filtration step entirely and released Writers Tears with its flavour unabated.

How does it taste? Wonderful! Bright, balanced, rich, no flaws at all - no bitterness, no dry woodiness separating out in the finish, no one note dominating. And the price: €35 in Dublin. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best Irish whiskey you can buy at that price point. My drinks shelf will never be without a bottle.

Whiskey & cheese pairings

I've put forward the argument for sampling cheese alongside whiskey. We did just that at the last meeting of the Irish Whiskey Society. For anyone who would like to repeat the experiment, the specific pairings are listed below.

It's most definitely not the case that any whiskey goes with any cheese. During the research phase for this tasting (conducted with IWS President, Gary Mongey) we quickly discovered that some combinations fought with each other. Sometimes the whiskey overwhelmed the cheese, sometimes the cheese overpowered. Even a seemingly obvious pairing like smoky whiskey with smoky cheese failed entirely to take off.

There is an added difficulty that the same cheese can be different each time you buy it. The St Gall, for example, was younger and less intense on the night, and couldn't quite deliver the knockout one-two combination with its paired whiskey.

All three of the big distilleries in Ireland were represented. Cooley, however, contributed four of the six bottles. This wasn't intentional; the choices were entirely dictated by the cheeses. Cooley happens to make a much wider range of whiskey than the others - malt, grain, peated, unpeated, finished, unfinished, and various combinations thereof - so we were more likely to find matches among its output.

All cheeses, with the exception of the Gubbeen, are unpasteurised.

The pairings:

1. Greenore 6yo & Gubbeen
   Gubbeen is a pasteurised cow's milk cheese and the mildest of the cheeses we sampled. That suggested a light whiskey and they don't get any lighter than the single grain Greenore, from Cooley.
   
   The usual expression of Greenore is 8 years old. This 6yo was produced for the Swedish market and I selected it because it was less likely to have been tried previously by society members. I think Greenore suited well enough but it was the opinion of some that a bit more cask age was demanded. On the night, with the Gubbeen we had, I agree.
   
   
2. The Irishman Single Malt & St Gall
   St Gall is perhaps my favourite cheese, and in the research phase went extremely well with The Irishman Single Malt. On the night, the cheese was a little under-matured, as I said. It develops nicely on the finish and so marries well with a whiskey that delivers its hit up front.
   
   The Irishman Single Malt, like the majority of 40% ABV whiskeys, is chill-filtered because some export markets demand it. The bottles destined for the Irish market, however, are released without chill-filtering. This nicely parallels the unpasteurised St Gall. There was no compromise on flavour in the making of either whiskey or cheese.
   
   
3. Writers Tears & St Tola
   St Tola is a fresh goats cheese. In texture and flavour it is most unlike any other cheese I've had. It is soft and gluey, and the taste is a quiet lemony tang. I wouldn't choose to eat it on its own but it was really transformed by the addition of the punchy but controlled Writers Tears.
   
   We always vote on our favourites after a tasting and both whiskey and cheese, and the combination thereof did very well here. You can see all the results here.
   
   I won't say more about Writers Tears here because that will be the topic of my next article.
   
   
4. Tyrconnell 10yo AN Crianza Finish & Bluebell Falls Hard Goats
   We stuck with the goats for the next round, though in a very different style. This Bluebell Falls is hard, almost crumbly. Goats cheese has a particular taste that some people find hard to accept but it has really mellowed here.
   
   We originally matched this cheese with an aged Tyrconnell (a 15yo say) from Cooley. The Anima Negra Crianza finish is a new whiskey produced specially for the Celtic Whiskey Shop. We had the chance to sample it a week before its release so we could not pass that up.
   
   It's a magnificent whiskey, one I should probably write up separately. Suffice to say that it really fizzed with the cheese. A great match and, indeed, the favourite of the night.
   
   
5. Locke's 8yo & Knockanore Smoked
   We tested this oak-smoked cheese with Connemara, a properly smoky whiskey. The smoke-on-smoke didn't work, however, so we tried Locke's 8yo, also from Cooley. This whiskey contains a very small proportion of peated malt (10%, my notes from an old tasting state) so that it's not obvious what's going on until you get to the finish, when the peat reveals itself.
   
   It's a strongly-flavoured whiskey that can hold its own against the smoked Knockanore. The suggestion of smoke in the Locke's is neatly filled by the actual smoke in the cheese.
   
   
6. Connemara 8yo & Crozier Blue
   Instead, a smoky whiskey is tailor made for the salty-sweetness of a blue cheese. I find it hard to eat a lot of blue cheese but this cheese made from sheep milk is smooth and delicate and quite addictive.
   
   The 46% Connemara 8yo is only sold in Sweden. We tried it before as part of a vertical Connemara tasting where it was my favourite. Ordinary Connemara is a vatting of 4-, 6- and 8-year old whiskeys, the 8yo providing the finish. To my palate, the 8yo finish is predominately liquorice, and very pleasant.

The whiskey part of the evening came to an end there but the cheese continued with a bonus tasting. We were privileged to have a real cheesemaker, Tom Burgess from Coolattin Cheddar, explain how his cheese is made and to lead our tasting of his 2- and 3-year old cheddars. It has just gone on sale here in Dublin, in Fallon & Byrne.

Again unpasteurised, this cheese is so much more flavourful than the cheddars you get in the supermarket. The 3-year old is perhaps a little dry to eat on its own but it tastes so good. I had a vision of the best ham, cheese and pickle sandwich ever which I will have to make reality in the immediate future.

I'd like to thank Kevin Powell, from Fallon & Byrne, who introduced each cheese on the night, leaving me to waffle on the more familiar topic of whiskey. And Rachel Firth and Emma Colleran, also from Fallon & Byrne, for selecting the cheeses and other valuable advice.

Thank you to Bernard Walsh (The Irishman / Writers Tears) and John Cashman (Cooley) for supplying the hooch and for putting up with all my questions (and for making great whiskey!).

And thank you to the rest of the Irish Whiskey Society committee who somehow pull off a tasting every month with military efficiency. I have a new appreciation for the amount of work involved.

Whiskey & Cheese?

I was talking to the Master Blender of Glenmorangie Distillery, Rachel Barrie, last year at an event in Dublin. I mentioned the Irish Whiskey Society and our monthly themed tastings. She raved about a whiskey and cheese evening in Scotland she had recently enjoyed and strongly recommended we give it a go here.

My curiosity was piqued but I didn't know much about cheese so I went along to a Slow Food tasting of raw milk (ie unpasteurised) Irish cheeses a few months later. Now I've always liked cheese, but this was something else entirely. The textures and flavours were stunning, the skill and passion for quality of the artisans even more so. I was reminded of the years I spent drinking basic Jameson (a fine drink, don't get me wrong) without realising there was a whole world to discover behind the few bottles of whiskey on the pub shelf.

At this point, these two great Irish products were becoming associated in my mind. Cheese and whiskey may be made in other countries but the Irish versions can match the best anywhere. Both promise an endless journey of exploration and exciting tastes to be experienced. Both, if they are to be done well, depend on the accumulated experience of decades, and perhaps generations.

But do they work well together? I mentioned the idea of pairing the two to many people and the usual reaction was scepticism. You mean wine and cheese, right?

The Slow Food folk say that the food and drink that develop together in the same region tend to go well together, like German bratwurst and beer, for example. It's a very plausible theory, since the raw ingredients may well be the same, and they have both been shaped by the preferences of the same local population. They are probably consumed as part of the same meal too.

I would have to admit, however, that we have no tradition in Ireland of consuming any kind of food alongside our whiskey, never mind cheese. There is the added inconvenient fact that cheesemaking really disappeared as an art in Ireland in the twentieth century, despite the continued strength of dairy farming. It has revived over the last few decades, often thanks to immigrants from Germany and elsewhere, but we just haven't had the chance to develop a culture of enjoying whiskey and cheese together.

Well, traditions have to start somewhere, and I think it's about time we started a new one. So, last Thursday, with the help of cheese experts from Fallon & Byrne, I gave my first presentation to the Irish Whiskey Society. I framed the evening as an experiment, with six Irish whiskeys paired with six Irish cheeses for the consideration of about 45 members and guests of the Irish Whiskey Society. I'll describe the pairings in the next article, but I think I can announce the experiment was a success. From this moment on, Irish whiskey and Irish cheese are officially a match!