DARK COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
ISSUE No. 1 AUGUST 2019
BARLEY LEGAL IN THIS MARK REYNIER - DAVE QUINNGRACE O'MALLEY - POWERSCOURT ISSUE - REVIEWS - ANONYMOUS EMAILS
In this issue... Of Blood And Soil An interview with Mark Reynier Midleton master of science Dave Quinn takes a deep dive into the DNA of booze Former Cooley distiller Noel Sweeney takes the reins at the aristocratic Powerscourt Distillery The trio behind indie bottler brand Grace O'Malley This issue's AntiSocial Diary features two pages of photos from the Academy Charity Tasting, a fanorganised event in Midleton Distillery, because somehow this is what the world needs
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A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
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hen I was 13, a friend and I published a heavy metal fanzine. It was crudely thrown together using a typewriter, photocopier and stapler, and it was terrible. There was no second issue. Publishing has changed in the three decades since since we typed and stapled our zine together; print is in decline, and the way we consume information has changed irrevocably. I know this better than most, as I worked as a subeditor and page designer in an evening newspaper for 12 years before taking redundancy. But I still love print production and design, and just playing around with words, colours and images. This fanzine is just a continuation of those loves. Much like my first foray into publishing 30 years ago, I made most of this. Stock photos and flat icons came from free websites, and the whole thing was put together on free DTP software. There are no ads, there is no money to be made, no hands that feed, no gods, no masters. As for the content all of it was written by me, but if there ever is another issue of this hot mess, I’d really rather other people contribute. The title of the publication sets the tone - this is about dark spirits, so give me your thoughts on just any drink that isn’t completely clear; I’m just looking for clear thinking on unclear drinking. Rum, agave, brandy, tequila - all welcome. So drop me a line contact details are on the back cover. Until you get there, come drown with me in the waters of life.
LOVE, BILL XXX OOO
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THE TERROIRIST
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M
ark Reynier believes the Vikings invented whisky. The nomadic distiller claims that, contrary to the common belief that it was Irish monks who discovered it, it was the Vikings who first started to distill barley to make the water of life. Why would monks make such strong spirit, Reynier counters to anyone who objects to his interpretation of history surely for men of God it would be heresy? Whatever about his take on the origins of distilling, few can doubt that he is well versed in heresy. A thirdgeneration wine merchant and independent whisky bottler, Reynier was the driving force behind the resurrection of Bruichladdich Distillery on the Hebridean island of Islay. He bought the mothballed distillery, transformed it into a gloriously wild experiment in the somewhat staid world of Scotch whisky, and then sold for stg£54 million it in 2012. After the sale, Reynier took some time off and went fishing. Many in his position would have simply retired, but Reynier was to prove that his work on Islay was laying down a template for what
would follow, as he brought his unique approach to whisky to its spiritual home Ireland. Whilst on Islay, Reynier became obsessed with barley. The central ingredient of any single malt, it somehow ended up with a walkon part in distilling large firms place almost all the emphasis on casks, claiming that up to 80% of flavour comes from the wood the spirit ages in. Ever the heretic, Reynier queries why, if wood is so important, they don’t just use neutral spirit to make whiskey, or indeed simply water? Why bother with barley at all, if it has so little input? He decided that barley was the key to everything, and that local barley the most important of all. While many larger distillers quietly imported their barley from warmer climes to ensure supply (and keep costs down), Reynier started using locally grown barley. His background in wine meant he knew about the importance of provenance and terroir the unique microclimate that makes the wine from one vineyard completely different to wine from one COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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alongside it. So he brought out whiskies that were distilled from certain strains of barley, or from certain farms. Duncan McGillivray, former general manager of Bruichladdich, happened to mention to Reynier that the best barley he had ever seen was from the south east of Ireland. Fortuitous indeed then that shortly after the sale of Bruichladdich, Reynier managed to snap up the state of the art Guinness brewery in Waterford, the capital of Ireland’s sunny south east, for a bargain 7.5 million euro. He rehired many of the former
Diageo staff who were let go when Guinness pulled out, and while he transformed the brewery into a distillery, his staff transformed from brewers to distillers. Now all he needed was some grain. Reynier put in place an unprecedented network of farms to supply his barley, with a forensic level of detail Waterford Distillery can track their spirit from grain to glass, and tell you about soil types, field locations, barley strains and even a short history of the farmer who grew it. Their storage facility was named the ‘barley cathedral’ and the
" SOIL
distillery itself became a kind of techopagan temple created solely for the adoration of grain, with Reynier as chief celebrant. There were to be no white spirits no vodka, no gin, no poitin no single pot still whiskey, a traditional Irish style, and no grain whiskey. This is about single malt and nothing else. Waterford’s first whisky hits the shelves in spring of 2020. With a solid business plan and the confidence of his backers among them Waterford native and pharma
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mogul Seamus Mulligan Reynier is in no hurry to get his product out. Yet while many distilleries play it safe in those shaky early years, Reynier is taking his spirit of experimentation to the roots of whisky itself. Reynier was the first person to distill Irish whisky from organically grown barley. But this wasn’t enough how do you enhance terroir to the highest possible degree? The answer lay in some of the world’s great
HERE IS THE MEDIUM
vineyards, and the writings of the occultist philosopher Rudolf Steiner. In 1924 a group of farmers were concerned about the impact of modern farming methods on their soil. They enlisted Steiner’s help, and he gave a series of lectures which went on to form the central strut of biodynamics. This modernsounding agricultural philosophy sees the farm as an organism, one which is self contained and does not need outside interference. Fertilizer should come from the farm itself through a series of preparations one of which is a cow horn packed with manure and buried for a period of time, while a spray for aphids comes from water that nettles have been soaked in. Steiner was the father of anthroposophy a philosophy led by the belief that there is a spiritual world accessible to us all through inner development. With biodynamics, he drew on this and the teaching of mystics from the 16th century, and thus some of the guidelines of biodynamic agriculture are somewhat left of field. To quote some of the instructions on the Biodynamic Association website: The six compost preparations are made from specific herbs: yarrow flowers, chamomile blossoms, the whole areal portion of the stinging nettle while in flower, oak bark, dandelion blossoms and valerian flowers. Four of these six preparations are enveloped in sheaths of animal organs. All are made with a sensitivity to the rhythms of the sun and zodiac. All
but one are buried in the ground for a specified period of time. When the preparations are finished, they have the appearance of wellripened compost, with the exception of the valerian preparation, which is in a liquid form. Whilst much of biodynamics is an engaging form of holistic agriculture, the use of ‘sheaths of animals organs’ and lunar phases as a guide for planting is a stumbling block for many. The body which awards biodynamic certification, the Demeter Association, does not enforce the lunar calendar planting, but does ensure the preparations are as laid out by Steiner. Yet while biodynamics has its critics, it hasn’t stopped some of the great wine producers from using it Domaine Zind Humbrecht, Romanee Conti, and Chateau Margaux all adhere to the rules laid down by the Biodynamic Association. As Reynier has shown consistently throughout his career, if it works for wine, then why not whisky after all, he openly admits that he is making a whisky for wine drinkers. This is for those who want to delve deeper into the liquid, to understand its provenance and to answer the bigger question of ‘why’ why does this drink have the flavours it does? “Soil here is the medium,” Reynier says. “It’s made from the subsoil which is made from the bedrock, COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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From one aspec interests of huma Agric  Rudolf 8 COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
ct or another, all an life belong to culture. f Steiner COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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which is filled with minerals, and the roots of whatever it is growing down into those different soils gets the most minerals. This is why we chose biodynamics if you as a farmer keep putting nitrates on the ground, what incentive is there for the roots to go down, if they are just being fed on the surface? So the more fertiliser you use the less likely it is that the roots will dig deep. “Most whisky drinkers are going to have no idea what we are talking about I don’t care but wine drinkers will. They will understand, or at least the guys I am talking to, will understand how biodynamics has influenced the greatest winemakers to take the ultimate step up. “Biodynamics is agricultural management philosophy that is the culmination of ten thousand years of farming know how call it folklore, call it old wives tales, whatever. But this is accumulated knowledge of how to grow, and how to look after your land, from before a time when you could go to the shops and buy what you needed to care for the land, you had to use what you had on your land, and they knew that everything they needed was right there. “Fertilizers, pesticides, all naturally produced. Everything was done from within the farm. It was codified by Rudolf Steiner, who was approached by the farmers who felt that all this
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accumulated knowledge about caring for the land was being lost to modernity, and to the agro chemical industry that really started after the First World War, when all these munitions firms went into selling chemicals to farmers. “You can see the results of this, where chemical oversude has created a pan in the soil, soil that is to all effects dead, thanks to all the chemicals. So the soil is dead, the erosion is high, the fertility is zero, it’s almost like hydroponics. It creates an ever increasing need to put more and more things like into the soil. “What Steiner realised was that what the old farmers knew actually worked. So he wrote it up in a code, which is called biodynamics. It’s more than organics biodynamics is a way of life. It is a way of keeping a live soil going. “Vineyards are where you see it most the biodynamically farmed vines become healthier, they are able to resist infection. Of course, this doesn’t mean a biodynamic winemaker will be a good winemaker it just means you will produce very good grapes. But if you are a great winemaker, and you have the best terroir, then your biodynamic grapes will make an incredible wine. It’s no coincidence that many of the top ten or fifteen winemakers have biodynamic vineyards. They don’t say much about it, perhaps because they are a little embarrassed by it
biodynamics is easy to ridicule, easy to poohpooh.” Reynier says the roots of biodynamically farmed crops go deeper, the plants dig for nutrition as they are meant to, rather than relying on a shallow surface layer of regularly sprayed chemicals. His belief in biodynamics is overwhelming he says that the lunar planting cycle makes sense, for just as the moon controls the tides, so too must it control fluid like sap within plants.
As for Reynier himself, he is slower to put down roots. He still lives on Islay but commutes to Waterford on a weekly basis. If that seems like a trek, it is a short hop in comparison to the journey he undertakes to his latest project, a rum distillery on the island of Grenada, a development even more challenging than Bruichladdich and Waterford combined. But Reynier is undaunted. In Ireland he has encouraged farmers to resurrected heritage grains two barley strains named Hunter and Goldthorpe which haven’t been used commercially for decades, and were brought back from a seed bank. These strains of barley fell by the wayside in the agriculture industry’s shift away from choices based on flavour towards strains picked due to their yield.
University to prove that terroir exists first they have micro distilled samples from two varieties, grown and harvested at two test sites independently, and De Herb now matching up the environmental data with independent sensory analysis. Then they will be sending the samples off for gas chromatography to get compounds/sensory/environmental data matched up, so they can interrogate environmental changes and the compounds that result from it. The full report is due towards the end of 2019. Until then, the great whisky terroir debate will rage on, with Reynier in the eye of the maelstrom. He seems to be driven by a desire to prove that what we call ‘conventional wisdom’ is a form of complacency, whether it is in his belief in terroir, biodynamics or his claim that the vikings invented whisky. Reynier’s detractors would say that he is an agitator who uses conflict to keep the conversation steered in the direction of his whisky project, but his action speak far louder than any words. Waterford Distillery’s experiment in terroir has taken Irish soil, Irish grain and Irish farmers and placed them back where they belong at the heart of Irish whisky.
The distillery is also working with Dr Dustin Herb from Oregon State COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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Here, gentle reader, lies an anonymous email I got from someone claiming to work in the distilling industry. They were genuinely interested in the topic of terroir, and had some strong words for proponents of it. So here it is......
THE
COUNTERPOINT
“We played with that more than a decade ago and took three separate strains of barley and made three totally different malts. The taste difference was notable as new make, but this was expected as most new make batches will have a slight difference in taste and aroma. However, we put them into three very similar casks (all ex bourbon from the same distillery with the same fill and disgorging date) as identical as possible considering a cask's variance. All the whiskies tasted the same after five years. "The barrel is far too overpowering for the tiny incremental changes the terroir supporters suggest. "In my opinion, terroir in whiskey is 100% a marketing ploy, as I've tested both ways identical whiskey from the same batch in different casks and the opposite test with different whiskies in as identical as possible barrels and on both tests the barrel comes through by a huge country mile. "The barrel does the vast majority of the flavour, definitely 70% or more depending on the barrel. 12 COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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“Try buying a charred or toasted cask, add plain spring water to it and even after 48 hours of the water in the cask, remove some water and taste it and you'll get those unmistakable whiskey flavours. The cask is honestly the big difference in whiskey. “Think of how many medals Cooley won prior to the sale to Beam. John Teeling couldn't give his whiskey away at the time (which is why he had so much mature stock). And then all that stock got sold to brands and they did some unique finishes (Teelings 24 year old is a recent example finished in Sauternes casks), Hyde is another and plenty more world awards from that stock. All the same whiskey as Noel never did much to change the mash bill at Cooley. The difference came in the finish, which was 100% from the cask. Every single brand in Ireland has known the importance of the barrel for hundreds of years. Even think of Redbreast in 1903. Gilbeys were wine merchants as were the Mitchell brothers with the Spot family. They had leftover wine casks and got them filled by Jameson. It resulted in some of the world’s best ever whiskey.”
P
FUTURE
PROOF W
hat is it that makes a whiskey great, beyond any subjective preferences, beyond any labels or marketing? What is the secret to a great whiskey? If you wanted to ask someone, Dave Quinn is a good person to start with. He was part of that first generation of distillers who focussed on the idea of whiskey as a molecular event that needed to be explored – people who saw distilling as a science as much as an art. From Longford, he went to college in Galway where he studied biochemistry and then biotechnology. Moving to Cork he started working with Irish Distillers in the 1980s, before transferring to Bushmills – then owned by IDL – in 1996, before transferring back to
Midleton in 2002, where he is now their Master Of Science. But what exactly is the science of whiskey? “Science is just a way of saying we are trying to find a better way of understanding what’s happening right down at the molecular level – understanding the link between what we describe as flavour and taste, and what are the congeners, what are the flavour compounds that actually contribute to that, to what you perceive as taste, flavour, aroma, and we have a certain level of understanding of that but not a complete one by any manner or means,” he says. Of course, making whiskey isn’t a one step affair – and parts of the process are easier to understand than others, particularly those at the front end.
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“It’s easier to understand the biochemistry of brewing and yeast fermentation, what happens to the yeast, the compounds it produces. Where things start to get a bit more tricky is when we get into wood maturation. We have an understanding of some of the wood compounds that contribute but there is a lot of other wood compounds that we don’t fully understand or know about.” But long before the spirit comes into contact with wood, Quinn and his colleague Dr Dagmara Dabrowska have a way of studying distilling. Squirrelled away within the Midleton campus is a pilot plant – effectively a fully functioning scale model of the distillery, in the style of Derek Zoolander’s school for ants. Initially created as part of their proposed energy saving programme, it began life as a 1/2000th version of the grain columns, and it is here that much of their work takes place. “We have a pilot plant up there, where we have small pot stills and a column still so we can work on them there without even coming down here to the microdistillery. The pilot plant is very much more … automated isn’t the right word, but with more places where we can take samples and monitor a lot of the variables like temperature and pressure. "With the energy saving programme we did a lot of that work in the pilot plant.” The energy saving was one of the most impressive feats of an already impressive operation in Midleton. The pilot plant was commissioned to conduct R&D into the proposals, which saw them shave 20% off their energy use. Dr Dabrowska is credited with much of the success of that project. As Head of Analytical and Technical Development, she helped find new ways to transfer energy between
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the columns – a piece of equipment that, Aeneas Coffey would be delighted to know, produces more spirit than any other part of Midleton distillery. Their colossal grain output was finally celebrated with the recent release of both the 31yearold and 11yearold single grain bottlings, the distillery’s first under their own name (the Irish Whiskey Society released a Midleton grain bottling two years ago). Launched under the Method & Madness incubator brand – a space for IDL to experiment with their output – the grain whiskeys were a striking departure from the heritage potstill brands like Redbreast and Yellow Spot to a more modern aesthetic and an embracing of science. But whiskey is all science, despite what the marketing department might tell you. The modern distillery tries to site itself in a romantic pastoral dreamscape, where the distiller hand operates all aspects and divines the perfect cut using only his senses. The truth is rather different. Modern distilleries have more in common with pharma plants than the sort of thatchedcottage scenes on their labels. Distillers are – and always have been – scientists. But it is in the collision between the quantifiable perfection of science and the beautiful chaos of human nature that some of the most interesting interactions take place, as Quinn points out. “For example, somebody is doing a sensory evaluation trying to use normal everyday words to describe the flavour that they are seeing or feeling, to try and take that – say somebody saying I get a nice hint of floral note, a bit of rose petal and a bit of leather, and cigar tobacco in the background – there is no way that you could say well that is due to ABCD or E, as different people will have different terminology and different language
to describe what they perceive as flavour. “So one of the things we do in our sensory science lab is to try and standardise the language a little bit so that if somebody does say leather or cereal notes or whatever, we try and ensure that everyone uses the same language to describe that particular attribute in the whiskey. "And then we might try and see if we can determine what is causing or what is contributing to that.” But while the pilot plant and sensory science lab may be akin to the Large Hadron Collider, there is no one illusive God Particle that can create a particular flavour. “Invariably it is not just a single congener – it could be the effect of multiple congeners coming together to give you a single
sensory effect. You have some compounds that on their own … – you find a single compound and put it into neutral alcohol and increase its concentration so you get to a point where you could actually perceive it as an aroma, and then if you go below that minimum level and you don’t get it then that is deemed the flavour threshold – in other words, you have some compounds that have very high flavour threshold, in other words you need a lot of them for you to perceive it. “But then some are very low flavour thresholds, levels that you can barely measure, but you can still pick it up on the nose. And it is those compounds that are the key ones in terms of bridging that gap between identifying the sensory act of compounds and identifying them COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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and relating them to a particular character. “What can happen is that you can get small individual compounds that might be below the flavour threshold; in other words, theoretically you should not be able to pick them up. But there’s a few of them that are sometimes present together that can almost act synergistically so that individually you wouldn’t be able to detect them but when they are combined together they give you a flavour and perception. And then you are getting into an area that can be very difficult to fully explore.” That ‘area’ is us. Our perceptions are based on a combination of nature – the senses we are born with – and nurture – the tastes we develop as we grow, which are impacted on by the culture and environment around us. “Different people will have different preferences, different likes, even different sensitivities to flavors so there will be some elements of flavour that some people will pick up readily and other people cannot perceive them at all.” Quinn’s work with Irish Distillers is less about stripping the soul from whiskey than it is about understanding how to make the best whiskey possible. It may seem like a eugenics programme, where error and, thus, personality, are eliminated under the jackbooted march of lab technicians in white coats, ruthlessly striving for a dystopian purity. In reality, it is what science always aims to be – about doing better. “We are trying to understand distilling at a molecular level. The key is – the more you can understand, the more you can make informed decisions about what influences the taste or the character of whiskey. "But it is also about what aspects don’t affect it. If you don’t have
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some level of understanding then you can’t really go and do the same distillation with confidence. You can only do this if you have a good understanding of the technical, science element of what you’re doing, because if you’re just relying on old wives tales and superstitions about not changing anything in the distillery, then you will never be able to develop something unique and interesting.” Quinn knows a thing or two about doing unique things, given that, along with Peter Morehead, he was one of the chief drivers of the runaway success that is Jameson Caskmates, inspired by a spirit of innovation, experimentation and adventure. But while the Method & Madness brand has the space for more mad scientist style experimentation with wood and distillate styles, in both the main distillery and micro distillery, part of Quinn’s work is to
“Different people will have different preferences, different likes, even different sensitivities to flavors so there will be some elements of flavour that some people will pick up readily and other people cannot perceive them at all.” - Dave Quinn ensure that as the Irish whiskey category explodes worldwide, a consistent standard is maintained, not just of quality but also of flavour profile. Distillers used to be full of superstition, where any change to the process – even the cleaning of cobwebs in the stillhouse – was deemed to be bad luck in case it affected the spirit, a culture of what a scientist might refer to as ‘poppycock’. “You can keep doing the same thing over and over again but if you have a better understanding of what the fundamentals are then you have a much better opportunity of directing your research and your experiments in a path you know will change the spirits, and you can say ‘let’s try it’ and know more or less what the outcome is going to be. "You go from a chancingyourarm,
needleinahaystack approach to having a far more focussed approach.” The distillery in Midleton is one of the most impressive, modern facilities in the world, and it has shown that you can be the biggest and also be the best. While the public facing side may be one of heritage and tradition, scientists like Dave Quinn, Dagmara Dabrowska and the rest of the Masters and their apprentices have shown that they are getting ever closer to unlocking the secrets of a perfect dram and entering a brave new world of truly great whiskeys. Above left, Franciscan Well brewer Shane Long with Dave Quinn at the launch of Caskmates in the Well. IDL has since bought a brewery, 8 Degrees, to satisfy its needs for the successful brand. COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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or, a Treatise on the fall and rise of the Great Houses, of spiritual matters and the sly art of slinging hooch 18 COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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here are three key strands to any whiskey marketing campaign. First, there are the people; tales of founders, their ancestors, coopers, barrelmen, distillers, gaugers, bootleggers. Then there is place; your water is the cleanest, your loch is the coldest, your warehouses are kissed by the sea, your home is where the hearts are. Finally, there is the product the wood, the copper, the yeast, the liquid
gold. But the stories that are easiest to tell, the ones that capture our hearts, are not the ones about the liquid, but about people and place, and how they interconnect.
I For all its aristocratic beauty, there is an air of gothic doom about Powerscourt House. Once home to the Powerscourt Conferences, when people COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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of God would gather to discuss unfulfilled biblical prophecies, it has survived being almost completely destroyed by fire, and decades of decay. The stunning gardens are even home to a pet cemetery this is Brideshead, revisited by Stephen King. But any of the great houses will have their share of tragedy, of highs and low, for they have existed for centuries, with Powerscourt House dating back to 1741. But it has bounced back, with a thriving 20 COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
marketplace within the house, bustling tourist trade, and now, in its most recent addition, a distillery. At a time when there are distilleries popping up across the country, Powerscourt Distillery is not only impressive because of the size of its operation, but because of the pedigree of the project. Two local entrepreneurs, Gerry Ginty and Ashley Gardiner, initially approached one of Powerscourt’s
current owners, Sarah Slazenger a descendant of the sporting empire’s founder and current MD of the estate about opening a distillery on the grounds of Powerscourt. It was the perfect venue incredible scenery, a steady flow of tourists, abundant arable lands, and centuries of history. Slazenger was in, but there was an opportunity for another investor, and this time they got one was an impressive background in whisky.
II Alex Peirce was halfways through his veterinary studies in Edinburgh when he discovered that he was allergic to animals. He was crestfallen, but coming from a family of entrepreneurs his father Mike was a founder of Mentec, which played a central role in Ireland’s tech boom Alex was quick to reroute into studying economics, consoling himself for his veterinarian Catch 22 by drinking a lot of highquality scotch. Then, in 1995, his father became one of the primary shareholders in the Isle Of Arran Distillery off the coast of Scotland. With Mike Pierce’s experience in Arran distillery, and the pedigree of the proposal Ginty and Gardiner had put together, it wasn’t long before
Powerscourt Distillery was ready to join the evergrowing list of new Irish distilleries. The Goodbody 2018 EIIS Fund brought them 5m in funding, while Pierce junior was in for 375k and his father for 750k. So they had vision, they had location, they had money, they had experience. But they needed one final piece of the puzzle a master distiller. There are many distilleries in Ireland, and many of the newcomers have either distillers, or head distillers, but very few have bona fide master distillers. The pressure was on Powerscourt Distillery to get someone who would live up to the pedigree of the project. Having had experience of making neutral spirit in the Carndonagh state alcohol plant in Donegal, Mayo man Noel Sweeney joined John Teeling’s legendary Cooley Distillery itself another one of the five state Ceimici Teoranta plants, along with Carndonagh, Ballina, Carrickmacross and Letterkenny in 1989. Qualified in analytical chemistry and total quality management, he was mentored in Cooley by a Scottish distiller named Gordon Mitchell, who later went on to work for the Peirce family on Arran in 1995. Teeling’s Cooley Distillery was a gamechanger in Irish whiskey up COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
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A bottle of Fercullen 14 in front of Powerscourt Waterfall. Fercullen Premium Blend Irish (RRP€42), Fercullen 10Year Old Single Grain (RRP €55), and Fercullen 14Year Old Single Malt (RRP €90) are available to purchase at The Powerscourt Distillery & Visitor Centre, and at selected outlets country wide.
until then, Irish Distillers Limited owned the only other distilleries on the island, in Bushmills and Midleton. Nowadays, IDL are a picture of support for newcomers, back then, they were less so, with Sweeney recounting one attempt being made by IDL, then headed by Richard Burrows, to buy Cooley so they could bulldoze it into the ground. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the competition authority blocked that deal, and Cooley continued to disrupt 22 COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE
they double distilled, they made peated whiskey, they sold to whoever wanted it, and they made excellent malt and especially excellent grain whiskey. But consolidation is the way for distilling especially when a boom strikes, as one has in the past five years in Ireland. The distillery was sold to Beam in 2012 for more than seventy million. In the aftermath, Beam cut off supply for third party sales, and created a vacuum, one that was soon filled by
John Teeling, who set up Great Northern, a sort of Cooley Mark II. Sweeney was still with Cooley, but was looking for a new project. At this point, the Irish whiskey boom was punching through the stratosphere, so it was only a matter of time before someone headhunted Sweeney he was inducted into The Whisky Magazine ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2017, a title held by only two Irish distillers to this day. So when the Powerscourt team came knocking, he was ready for a new challenge.
III With Sweeney on board, the group were able to secure stock from what they coyly refer to as an undisclosed distillery. NDAs, or nondisclosure agreements, are the unfortunate contracts that forbid mention of what distillery you source your stock from, but the spirits released by Powerscourt a ten year old grain, 14 year old single malt and a blend all bear Sweeney’s name as master distiller, because, as the man himself says, he is the person who distilled them. You can tell, because the grain has that soft, sweet element that Cooley and Sweeney in particular did so well. “In Cooley we used fresh bourbon barrels for an excellent smooth grain whisky. It’s creamy a nice introduction to whiskey. Lots of vanilla, citrus this is not any way harsh. Fercullen ten is finished in first fill bourbon. I made it, watched it for nine and half years, bought it and watched
it for another six months. Well, Alex and Sarah bought it and I watched it.” The location here is enviable centuries of history, remarkable scenery, and a torrent of tourists that any distillery visitors centre would be envious of. Then there is the team: With Sweeney, they have more than just an excellent distiller they have a seasoned communicator, a man plugged into the world whiskey network, and knows who has the best barrels and how much you should pay for them, and who also brought some of his excellent sourced stock to keep them ticking over while their own stocks mature. It is hard not to be impressed by the pedigree. Powerscourt Distillery is also offering a cask programme to would be investors Alex Peirce sees it as more of a club rather than a purely transactional entity. With asking prices of 7,600, and only 397 casks (honouring the 397 foot high Powerscourt waterfall) this will be a somewhat exclusive club. Peirce is quick to point out that this project isn’t about building a business and then flipping it they are in it for the long run, and a sign of how serious they are is seen in the fact they are not bothering with any intermediary spirits to bring in revenue over the next five to ten years. With the Irish whiskey boom showing no signs of slowing down, and this project’s accumulated wisdom, skill and prestige, Powerscourt from the great house to the still house look to a brighter future together. COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE 23
HERE BE HERE BE
DRAGONS DRAGONS
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Grace O’Malley - this much we The full facts of her story exist in the space between history and folklore, the former telling us that she was a ruthless warrior, a veritable Daenerys Targaryen, but with boats instead of dragons. The latter tells us that she was a pirate queen, oft portrayed in the buxom pastels of a swashbuckling bodiceripper, and described using patriarchal terms like feisty and headstrong. Whichever version you subscribe to, O’Malley, or Gráinne Mhaol, or Granuaile, was an outlier a woman of power in the late 1500s, a time when women had no power at all. Born into the Irish aristocracy, O’Malley was surrounded by men with names like Donal The Warlike and Iron Richard, but stormed her way to power in defiance of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. O’Malley was fighting against more than British tyranny when she commanded her warships she was fighting against the death of Gaelic rule, a battle that she would never win. Her death in 1603 marked the passing of an old order, and the start of a new Ireland, for better or worse. Stephen Cope knew he was onto something when he trademarked Grace O’Malley’s name. As the former MD of Lír Chocolates,
the Mayo man understood that Brand Ireland isn’t just about quality food and drink, it is also about storytelling, and that this is a nation overflowing with stories waiting to be told. With whiskey sales accelerating, a plan was hatched to release a whiskey that told the story of Grace O’Malley and her life well lived. And this is where two German advertising executives intersect with this story. Stefan Hansen loves rugby. He played it professionally in his early years, and still dabbles a little, on and off the pitch. When
lived know.
he was 23 he realised that if he was to become a fulltime pro, he would have to leave Germany, and probably never return. So he chose his homeland, and another path, forging a successful career in a global advertising firm, eventually breaking away with his friend Hendrick Melle to found private equity investment company Private Pier Investment and Private Pier Industries. The two had some brand experience with Ireland, via a pet food firm named Irish Pure, but they understood that Irish produce was respected around the world for its excellence. The trio set to work building the Grace O’Malley brand, but they needed product. They were looking for mature stock in the middle of a whiskey boom, when everyone is looking for mature stock. John Teeling is famous for being the teetotaller entrepreneur who democratised Irish whiskey, but he is also a rugby fanatic. When the O’Malley team sailed into the boardroom of Great Northern Distillery to talk shop, it ended up being a 45minute deep dive into rugby lore, with Hansen and Teeling rolling back the years. As the meeting ended, the actual business of the day was casually mentioned the O’Malley crew were seeking whiskey. Hansen asked for a large amount of
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mature stock of both excellent quality and age. Teeling said yes. The deal was done, and Grace O’Malley Whiskey was out of dry dock. They then brought in Paul Caris of drinks consultancy Alteroak. Caris, a Frenchman who works with gin and brandy producers, set to work on the whiskeys, aligning the different age statements with cask finishes, and arranging the releases in three distinct categories. The top level is the Captain’s Range: These are all 18 year old single malts, nonchill filtered and without E150a; the first is exclusively bourbon cask, limited to 900 bottles and retailing for 349. There are also 450 bottles of this released at
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cask strength, and these retail for 649. The Amarone cask finish edition is limited to 450 and is €449, while its cask strength edition is limited to 250 bottles at €799.99. The 450 bottles of cognac cask finish are €399.99 each the Amarone and Amarone Cask Strength are available to pre order on the site now. The prices may seem more suited to someone who might have a horde of pirate loot on the Isle of Tortuga, but the team points out that they are limited releases and they have also based the pricing on an independent chemical analysis of the composition and objective quality of the distillate. The pricing also reflects Caris's
involvement; while they also claim the wood barrels Italian, Jamaican and French are the absolute best provided by Caris’s company. The firm also says the finishing 'fresh and wet' is unique and they are only able to do this through Caris’s sourcing knowledge and links to the top wine and cognac makers. Fortunately, for the steerage passengers among us, there is the midrange Navigator whiskeys the Dark Char and Rum Cask blend, and the Dark Cask blend, both priced at €64.99. The Crew Range will be the entry level whiskey which will be a blend launching in June with an RRP of €39.99. This is
a blend of 40% triple and double distilled single malts and 60% grain whiskeys of varying age statements up to 10 years old. They will also have a Heather Infused Gin RRP €42.99 in their Crew Range and a Golden Caribbean Rum. There are plans for a maturation facility on the west coast, and the trio are estimating that they will be generating €6m in revenues within five years. There are no plans for a distillery the Grace O’Malley brand is going to be independent bottlings, with an eye to bonding in the future. The brand is launching across Europe, but as with so many Irish whiskeys, America is the promised land, where the brand
hopes to appeal to the 33 million people who claim Irish ancestry. With its characterdriven narrative you could write this off as a novelty release, but this is a brand with something for all palates (and wallets); entry level to super premium, blends to well aged single malts. Leather bound bottles make it eyecatching to the average consumer, while those limited numbers on the high end bottles will appeal to collectors. The brand narrative is on point they held the launch in Howth Castle, where in 1576, when O’Malley was refused access to the castle, she took the occupant’s owners relative hostage until they were forced to allow her entry, and as a result, a
place at the table is always set for her. The team behind the brand are even sponsoring a yachtswoman who happens to be a descendant of O’Malley; Westport native Joan Mulloy is hoping to compete in the Vendee Globe, a solo roundtheworldrace in 2020. Joan will represent the brand in a number of events and special challenges, including a trip later this year retracing the route of her ancestor who sailed from Clew Bay to London for a meeting with Queen Elizabeth I in 1593. With their supply lines secured, and the wind in their sales, it would appear that the O’Malley team are on a winner. COME DROWN IN THE WATERS OF LIFE 27
ANTI SOCIAL DIARY:
The Academy Charity Tasting 2019
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T
hree whiskey bloggers organised a tasting in aid of Childline and Bumbulance on the 8th July 2019 in Midleton Distillery, with 100% of profits going to charity. This involved a VIP tour of the visitor centre taking in the “behind the scenes” tour which passed through the original Murphy’s distillery and on to the microdistillery for a Method and Madness gin; a demonstration from Midleton’s
Master Cooper Ger Buckley (below); then on to the Irish Whiskey Academy where Ger Garland hosted a tasting of The Palace Bar Redbreast Single Cask. The Whisky Exchange Green Spot 26yo Single Cask. The Method and Madness 28 year old Ruby Port, among others. All this was followed by an auction and raffle which raised more than three thousand euro for the very deserving charities.
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william.linnane@gmail.com