Hair of the Dog

UISCE BEATHA

Thought I'd follow up a post about beer with a post about whiskey!  You know in a sort of hair of the dog kind of way, it just makes sense.  A few weeks back Adam and I decided to check out what all the fuss over Irish whiskey was about.  When in Rome Ireland!  The word whiskey is an Anglicization of the ancient Gaelic term “uisce beatha” which translates as “water of life”.

 The Jameson Experience is just down the road from Cork in the town of Middleton. The tour unfortunately does not take you into their current modern production facilities, but I think what we did see might just have been better.  The tour takes you through the history of John Jameson and how his whiskey empire came to be.  It is simply amazing that something that began in 1780 is still going strong!  Even though we were not able to see the making of whiskey in action we received an informative tour about the distilling process. I really enjoyed walking through the old buildings used to store the barley, and seeing the huge copper pot stills, and water wheel once used to power the entire factory.  Jameson actually has a cool little virtual tour you can check out here if you would like to see where we were.

Notice the barley on the wheel?

This is inside the brew house, with huge whiskey barrels!

Copper Pot Still

Sexy Adam!

Another interesting part of the tour was seeing the cask in different stages of aging.  The whiskey gains most of it's color and develops different flavors from the tannins in the wood.  It's also amazing how much of the whiskey evaporates during the aging, talk about profit loss! Although I guess the longer the whiskey is aged the higher price it commands, so maybe it's not profit loss after all!

Whiskey aging through the years, notice the change in color and the evaporation?

My favorite part of the tour - the end.  Not because it was over, but because the final stop on the tour is in the tasting room!  Everyone receives a glass of the original Jameson served however they like, a variety of mixers, straight up, or on the rocks!  The guide also selected 3 women and 3 men to perform their own taste comparison.  Guess who volunteered!?  So Adam and I received three different shots of whiskey, a Scotch one you'll know as Johnny Walker, an American favorite Jack Daniels, and of course the Jameson.  I don't know much about whiskey, so I was shocked to find there was such a difference between all three!

For me it was a toss up between the Scotch and Irish.  Not everyone likes the smoky, peaty flavors in a Scotch whiskey, but I happen to find it very appealing.  However, the Jameson was lovely, almost sweet, and very smooth.  Triple distilling makes all the difference there!

In the end we received a fancy certificate proclaiming us to be official whiskey tasters!  We may be official now, and The Jameson Experience was indeed a fun experience, but beer still reigns supreme in the Croissant household! Cheers!