With St. Patrick’s day done and dusted for the year, we pick up some scribbled notes from Julian’s desk to see how he celebrated. Not being a Guinness drinker, we suspected Whiskey, firmly with an ‘e’, had been order of the day…
Although it’s a shame this was’t done before St. Patricks day, he was at least getting into the spirit (ahem) of things.
Teeling
Looks like he started with one of our favourite Irish Whiskies – Teeling. Distilled in Dublin, this is from a long line of Whiskey makers bearing the Teeling name, however the distillery as we know it now only began operation in 2015.
In such as short space of time, they’ve created something quite special;
Small Batch – their flagship whiskey. Small batch bottling of selected casks which are then finished in ex-rum barrels.
Full of flavour, and very smooth as you would expect. 46% abc gives it greater flavour with some sweetness and spicy aftertaste too.
Single Grain – 46% again but a grain whiskey finished in red wine casks. Lovely and smooth, full of fruity flavour with signature Teeling spice. Starky’s favourite Teeling apparently.
Connemara
Peated Whiskey from Ireland. Lot’s of exclamation marks on the notes here. By that, read; although you would expect Ireland to use lots of peat in their whiskey, they generally don’t. However, here’s the exception.
12 year old – again, spice comes through as with Teeling, but then creamy sweetness – more rounds like vanilla, with a hint of nuts too. Quite full bodied and the peat isn’t as intense as an Islay standard.
Pogues
The official drink of the band the label informs us. Made to the west of southern city, Cork, this is a blended whiskey.
Bottles at 40%, it doesn’t punch like the other three, but does offer some intenseness and sweetness. Perhaps I should have had this first though, as i can still taste the Connemara. More of a session whiskey, which is perhaps suited to noisy, raucous nights on the town than sat by my fire with two dogs at my feet…!
Back to the Teeling I think…
JuK.