Blended Irish Whiskey You put everybody else through this? How many bottles are here? Fifteen. Yeah, that's about right. That's a rite of passage in this profession, tasting until you've blown out your entire palate. We call it the Rocky Road to Dublin. Wack-fuh-la-la-da. I remember for rum, it was like seventy rums, and the last fifteen were Jamaican. Just... I was like... How's everyone's palates doing? What palate? Blown to pieces. Okay. You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. This week, we are going to talk about Irish whiskey, and to guide us through that process, Mr. Dan Nordman. I'm Dan, I work in spirits. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Jim, communications also. And I'm Roger, I work in beer, but I do enjoy a good Irish whiskey. Yeah. Yeah, you can drink, you know, the other thing that's cool about Irish whiskey is you can drink it outside of March. Yeah. But it is March. What? St. Patrick's Day month, as I like to call it, in the Chicagoland area. Yeah. Irish whiskey obviously needs to be made in one of the two Irlands, the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. And really a conversation about Irish whiskey can be centered around the different styles of Irish whiskey, with one in particular we'll get to that's very uniquely Irish, a single pot still, which we'll talk about what that is when we get to it. Like anything we do when we're tasting through a style, we want to start with a good baseline. So we're going to try a couple blended Irish whiskeys. And until recently, I'd say that's kind of like the lion's share. If you're unfamiliar with the category, you're probably thinking about blended Irish whiskey. Yeah. So the most famous brands, Jamieson, Bushmills, Polymordu, those are blends. Similar to Scotch, the most famous brands being the blended ones for a long time, and then now we're starting to see new interesting innovations. The thing that's kind of ironic about doing it this way is that you're kind of putting the cart for the horse starting with blended whiskey because blended whiskies are comprised of at least two other styles of Irish whiskey. So we're going to talk about the one that's blended from other styles and then talk about those other styles later. But it gives you a good baseline. Generally speaking, Irish whiskey, the kind of top line stuff is all pot stilled, triple distilled traditionally. But there's column distilled whiskey in Ireland as well. We'll talk about that style today as well. Which one do you want to start with? Let's start with Bushmills. We have Jameson on the table as well. But, you know, Jameson is kind of a brand that transcends the category. It's almost like a lifestyle brand at this point. And there's nothing wrong with it at all. The kids like to do the shots. Yeah. And Triple Distillation really leads to, like I said, it's tradition. It's not required, but it is a tradition. And that is what leads to Irish whiskey generally being, compared to other styles of whiskey, a generally light, floral, somewhat fruity spirit. Some of these are ice cold. A little bit of a chill on it from Dan's car. Yeah. All these blends are pretty much across the board 80 proof. For the most part, yeah. The one we'll do next is a little higher. It's more of a crafty kind. We have Bushmills. Yes, we have Bushmills in the glass. Dumb question. What are the grains in this? The major styles of Irish whiskey are blended, single grain whiskey, which we'll taste a couple examples of that. Single grain uses grains other than barley in addition to barley, so wheat, corn, rye, typically. You're going to see a good portion of grain whiskey in a blended whiskey generally. Grain whiskeys are column distilled, so that leads to even lighter fruitier style. So like neutrality, closer to vodka. Closer to neutrality, not neutral, but closer to that. A blended whiskey will be a blend of at least two styles, single grain, single malt, and single pot, still being the three other styles of whiskey. Bushmills smells like apple pie. Mm-hmm, it's just fruity and it's easy, right? Yeah. I think it's got some nice like pear and floral aromatics too, though. I've always liked Bushmills. I don't know if it's the whole Protestant Catholic jazz. I think that's one of the myths is that like Jameson is more beloved because of the Catholic one. I always preferred Bushmills personally. Yeah, I've been a Bushmills guy for a long time. You don't want to try Jameson right next to Bushmills? We can. We can throw Jameson around. I have had Jameson probably more than any of these others and I can't remember. It's cool to try these together just because of the history of Irish whiskey. By the 1970s, there were only two distilleries in Ireland. One was the Middleton Distillery and one was the old Bushmills Distillery. Middleton, of course, most famous for Jameson, but also Powers, Red Breast, The Spot Whiskeys, all made at the same distillery. The first, we'll taste a couple examples of this, the first distillery that was, the first new distillery in almost 100 years was the Cooley Distillery, started by John Teeling. Teeling is another important name in Irish whiskey as well. But yeah, these two are representative of, you know, if it was the 1970s, all of your Irish whiskey would have come from one of these two distilleries. Okay. Jameson's pretty, it's a nice little whiskey too. It's drier, I feel. It smells more spicy unless fruity, but only by degrees. Yeah, missed, missed. You got a paper towel. Grab one of those. You want a paper cup instead of the bedpan cup? A little of both. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. I felt this cool liquid flowing around my wrist. I'm like, oh, cool, Irish whiskey spit. None on my shirt though. How about that? Okay. Jameson tastes like Jameson and Bushmills tastes like slightly fruity or funner Jameson. Yeah. Bushmills has more of a round malt malt character, I think. Jameson's a little more of a crowd pleaser probably. Well, that's it. We tasted all of the Irish whiskeys available in America in 1992. All hail President Richard Nixon. Wrap it up. I tell you, I think those watergate things are just going to blow over. When you try those back to back, I feel like it really accentuates that Jameson tastes much drier than I would have remembered. And I'm sure it's just because I had just drank Bushmills. I agree. It's night and day. Well, it's not night and day. There's differences between them. But if you handed me a shot in a bar and said, is this Bushmills or Jameson? No way. Yeah. I would be like, wait. I would have guessed Jameson is probably sweeter. No, not at all. That's pretty interesting. And as we mentioned in the past, we're recording this earlier in the day. Your palate is always at its sharpest earlier in the day. So if you ever really want to evaluate something, maybe on your, you know, day off, try some spirits earlier in the day before you really had much to eat or anything. It's amazing how sharp your palate is. I've barely abused my palate with hot sauce so far today. Yeah, there you go. But you can see like both of those whiskeys, too. Like I would I would I would have no problem drinking those like in a highball with some club soda or even ginger. You know, that's kind of the use for those, I think. 7:28 Teeling Small Batch The next we're going to try is Tealink Small Batch. So again, it's a blended. It's the one right in front of you with the gold on top. Unopened apologies. The Notre Dame bio. Yeah, this is night and day. This one is night and day. Yeah, we got Tealink Small Batch. Finished in rum casks. Finished in rum casks. So yeah, Tealink. I mentioned John Tealink earlier. So as I as we said already, by the 70s, there were two distilleries in Ireland, both owned by one company. And then John Tealink started the Cooley Distillery. And that was the first new distillery in Ireland in I think close to 100 years. After their success, and we'll we have a bottle or two from them with at least with their liquid in it. After their success, John Tealink's sons started the Tealink Distillery in Dublin, which was the first new distillery in Dublin in quite a long time. They just hit their 10 year mark, Tealink. Oh wow. They make really good whiskey. We're going to talk a lot about Tealink today. The distiller who we've had on the podcast before has a background in beer. So he's really good at manipulating malt and doing interesting things with malt. The Small Batch is their baseline whiskey. Tealink puts out whiskey the way breweries put out IPAs. Sometimes, yeah. It feels like that. There's a ton of- Variants. Yeah. And if he has a beer background, I guess it makes sense. They use a lot of different barrels. This one Small Batch finished in rum casks, are they usually finished in rum casks? Irish whiskey can use any kind of casks. Some of the ownership of Tealink is under Bacardi, so they get access to some good rum casks. They also, with Irish whiskey, again, any kind of cask can be used. In fact, when you go to the Tealink warehouse, that is, it's kind of the one picture you need to understand how Irish whiskey is aged, because in that warehouse, there's thousands of barrels, and there's probably hundreds of shapes and sizes and The first time I had Ambarana cask anything was a Teeling Ambarana finish from a few years ago. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, when I walked into the Teeling warehouse last year, when we were there, I couldn't, I didn't know where they were, but I could smell that there was Ambarana in that warehouse. I looked at Brett, I'm like, Brett, there's Ambarana here somewhere. I know what I can fish. And sure enough, there were like, there was just like two Ambarana casks in this giant warehouse, and that's all you could smell when you walked into it. You're like a Barbarana bloodhound, wow. Yeah, it's just such a distinctive smell that once you like. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about this. This one is not that specifically. I think this really does showcase wood notes. Yeah. It's like vanilla cream pie. Yeah. It's got that high like kind of ester-y rum note too on it. Yeah. This is nice. This is 92 proof, so the others were 80, but this is a higher proof. Non-chill filter, they'll call that out on all their bottlings. It almost has like that deeply caramelized like creme brulee. Exactly. Note on the finish. That's really nice. Yeah, it is. It's like a refined dessert. This one's usually on every day 32.99 on sale usually for around 26.99. Is this just like a limited edition bottle where it has the Notre Dame thing on it or? Yeah, they do this. It's the same as the regular. They have a partnership with Notre Dame, which has forced me to say nice things about Notre Dame. Fight in Irish, Roger. Happy St. Patrick's Day. 10:59 Single Grain Whiskeys So that's Blended slash Small Batch Irish Whiskey. The next category is Single Grain Whiskey, Single Grain Whiskey. And anytime we use the word single, when we're talking about Scotch or Irish Whiskey, we're talking about, we're referring to one distillery. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. No, it's very confusing. Right. They screwed up language. Yeah. It's a single grain. Well, what's in it? Barley and something else. Yeah. No, it isn't. So single grain, yes, again, it refers to one distillery, not one type of grain. Single grain whiskey. So dumb. So it's single grain whiskey, not single grain whiskey. Single grain whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. However you want to say it. I'm telling you the audible pause. Single grain whiskey. Single distillery grain whiskey. There we go. These are column distilled. These are the only column distilled whiskeys that you see in Ireland. They use grains other than barley and usually some barley in addition. And then corn and wheat being the most common. Rye can be thrown in there as well. So we got two of these. The first you want to hand around the two stacks. That's the one that's unopened. Two stacks. They're one of the only independent bottlers in Ireland. This particular bottle is made up of whiskey coming from the Great Northern Distillery, which is what it was. It was basically John Teal. It's kind of like John Tealing's retirement project. He started this grain whiskey distillery really to age and be a source for other companies to buy their whiskey and blend them. Sulfury kind of note on here. This is finished. There's a matchstick note on here. Bourbon and Oloroso casks. That's Oloroso. That's where it's coming from. Cherry. It's a delicate thing, comes with brisks. Flinty. Oh, it's flinty. Some people really prefer that too. I don't mind it. It's a good smell. We've talked about that before. It's almost like savory. It gives a meatiness to the aroma. Yeah. That's what people who like it say. Yeah. It's not my favorite thing, but we all have things we like and dislike. You like olives. It reminds me of an olive note. That's interesting. If you used a spray paint can to fire an olive through a straw. Yeah. This is like 30 bucks, $27.99 I think right now on mops. It's so light and body and soft. It's so light and soft. Yeah. That's that column distillation. So that continuous distillation leads to a less weighty spirit, a little bit cleaner, lighter. Is it lower in alcohol? This one is 86 proof. So I mean, that's not 80. Wow. Dude, it's so soft. It's like it's like a candied orange peel. There's a lot here for like a bourbon drinker, I think. Yeah, there's some pepper on the finish, though, too. Yeah, I get that for sure. Black pepper or white pepper? Black. OK. I disagree, but no, I'm kidding. All right. Then we've got Glendalow Double Barrel, which is another grain whiskey. It says it's staged in bourbon casks and then finished in Spanish Oloroso. Yeah. Double kind of price point are you looking at for this guy? You know. For the two stacks? Yeah. 30 bucks every day. I think it's $27.99 right now. That's pretty cheap for a kind of niche product. Yeah. I mean, these are kind of like with that column distillation, they're kind of like the closest you have to the, I don't want to say bulk spirit, but you know, you don't see very many grain whiskies. True. They're mostly used in blends. And they're used to lighten up blends, honestly. It feels like it's not that far from the American blended whiskey. And I know that that's notoriously cheap, but it's just like a lighter style that's great for mixing and not thinking too hard. This is another $30 bottle. Glendaloo. Which Ireland is this in? This is Ireland. It's Ireland. Republic of Ireland. Republic of. Smells like bubblegum, a little bit of grain, a lot of banana, a lot of fruit on the palate, like a lot of that, like roasted banana. Yeah, this is very different. That also is quite soft. Little bit spicy. Maybe you're white pepper, but it's more about clove. Yeah. Cloven, clove and banana. Good baking spice. Hefeweissum, the whiskey. Yeah, it's very, it is banana and it's a bit, bit odd. Well, that's grain whiskey for you. 15:55 Irish Single Malts Next, probably the thing that other than Blended, that will be most familiar to whiskey drinkers is Single Malt. So much like Scotch, Single Malt Scotch, Single Malt Irish Whiskey, is made all from malted barley, and it's single again referring to single distillery. So the first one we'll try is Dunnville, because Greg's holding it. Look at this ridiculous bottle. So Dunnville comes from the- Very fun. It looks like something that Cherry Gilliam would animate. It looks like it's an Absinthe and not an Irish whiskey. So this comes from the Eklundville distillery. Eklund and Swedland. Hello. PX on this one too. Let me get this right. I got to look up. I always mess up the name, but it's because it's a- Sorry if I'm stealing the ship the direction you didn't want to go. I just couldn't resist grabbing that bottle. I like this bottle. It's real busy. It looks like a Roger Maximalist joint. It looks like a throwback to something from the 1800s. Did you find it in Apothecary? Yeah. This is from Northern Ireland. This is Eklundville Distillery. They are a relatively new distillery for us. And Dumbbells are really old brands, so this distillery is resurrecting older brands, which is something that you'll see this in American Whiskey too. There's some startup companies that are resurrecting old brands, partially for nostalgia and also to recreate the style of whiskey when this was around. Yeah, that label looks like something I'd find in my grandparents' basement. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I hope that's a like legit old label and not just trying to look old. I guess it doesn't matter if it is, but... It is an old brand. I don't know. I've never seen... If they were trying to, they succeeded in looking very old. But in a charming way. In a charming way. In a fancy old wallpaper way. Yeah, like definitely something that your grandma got soap in and then kept. Like this came in this tin. You've had that tin as long as I've been alive. I actually have a fun... I have this like box that I've kept. I took it... I like adopted it when I was like 15. It was in my parents' basement forever. And I hold... Like in this box, I just hold like mementos from like, you know, dogs that have died like their collar or like something that grandparent gave me or like an old card. And I've had this thing forever. And like 10 years ago, when I started really leaning into my Binny's career, I was looking at this box and it's an old wooden gift box for old granddad, 114. Wow. And I just had never thought about it because I was like, it's just a box I had forever. Since you were a child. Yeah. Yeah, since I was a child. And my dad was like, oh yeah, that was a good whiskey back in the day. No, back in the day. Still is. All right, let's talk about this one. Yeah, what do you think about Dundville? This is a really deep, interesting note. It's drawing me in. It's a great whiskey. Right? Darker roast, darker malts. The complexity is deeper than what we've had so far. I would guess this is from Scotland because I'm a dimwit. Well, there's like almost a little bit of smoke on there. Yeah, there's a little bit of peadiness and peadiness feels like peadiness. They do have, Dunnville has another one of their whiskies is a peaded, oh, it's a peat finish. So they aged it or finished it in a barrel that held peaded whiskey. So there might be a little bit of that in there, but probably what you're smelling is just treatment of the PX cask. There's like a little cheesiness too. Like a spiciness, cheesy spiciness. Cheesy? I'm not going to cheese. Like a little sharpness. Yeah, yeah. Like a cheesy sharpness, not bad cheesy. Cheddar sharpness. Yeah, like a cheddar sharpness. Yep. This is 10 years old. It's a bit of a jump up in price. It's $80. I knew it. I was looking at, I was like, this is phenomenal. This is going to be really expensive. When I was getting ready to say the word 80, I wanted to make sure I was looking at Roger's face. I was like, I'm going to go buy this tomorrow. It's like confection mixed with a savory umami. That's nice. Toothiness. Yeah. I like that. I think the, going back to the nose real quick, I mean, there's a florality and a tropicality to this that's pretty unreal. There's something, there's a rose lavender thing and then- I'm getting all of that, yeah. It's a beautiful whisky. Almost like a guava note. I think bourbon people would love this one too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, there's a spiciness. There's a rye spiciness that I'm getting on my tongue. I don't know. I can see that. And the bourbon guys can handle that $80 price point. That's old hat for the bourbon crowd. They're used to it. That's almost three bottles of Wild Turkey 101. Is there an age statement on it? 10 years old. 10 years. 10 years old. To be fair, that is the... It's not like this is out of category for that price point for an Irish single malt. That's age statement. You got to pay for those. Scotch would be more expensive. And Scotch would be about there. Depends. Yeah. But the Irish single malts, there aren't many. They've all kind of gone quite up. Like Red Breast, I would argue, is one of the most recognizable. That's gone up quite a bit in the last 10 years or so. Yeah. And Red Breast is, just to keep you remembered to, is a single pot still. Oh, right. Except for the single malt. But speaking of single malts, open that Tyrconil, because this is more in line with Roger's price point. This is actually a $32.99 bottle of Irish single malt. $32.99? This is made at the Cooley Distillery. This has not gone up in price in like 15 years. It's unbelievable, but it's still under $40. Well, here comes the $40. Barrel to Bottle Bump. Yeah. Next month, it will double in price. Get Whiskey of the Year, accidentally. This is literally one of the best values on the shelf. The one with the horse. Definitely looks like Kentucky vibes. No cap with the horse on it, though, unfortunately. No cap. Oh, yeah. Now, it just has a normal cork enclosure. Matured in ex-burban casks. Cool. A bet on a horse because of a bottle of smoke. My horse won. This is still rich. I mean, still has some richness to it. It's going to be a lot softer and lighter than the other one. Holy bubble gum. Do you taste him, Miss? It's like an almost burning apple. It's like a kind of bubble, double bubble. Yeah, this is nice. Bazooka Joe. I hope for 33 bucks. I got tons of Bazooka Joe here. Does this come with a little comic? Yeah. Yeah. Bubble gum and green apple, both of them. Well, yeah, or I would argue bubble gum is arguably trying to capture multiple fruits at the same time. So you'd get juicy fruit. Juicy fruit. Jackfruit. But yeah, there's a berry note here. There's a little bit of orchard stone fruit peach kind of. Yeah, yeah. I like that a lot, especially the price point. How much is that again? $34.99 for a TierConnell. $34.99. Yeah, there's still like, compared to scotch, scotch is traditionally double distilled. There's a couple of distilleries in Scotland doing triple distillation, but for the most part, scotch is double distilled, so you're generally gonna have a richer body and a little more depth of character compared to Irish whiskey, but I think with Agreed. Very good. Excellent whiskies. Do they do any cask finishes at all? They do, I mean, they've got other bottlings like that. Remember that Kill Beggin that we did several years ago? That same distiller. This is actually, I think they technically refer to themselves as Kill Beggin distilling. On the Chair Connell? Well, that says Cooley Distiller. Imported by Kill Beggin Distilling import. And then Cooley Distillery, so it calls up both of them. Beautiful whisky. And the seal on the back. Against Victory. All odds. And then, let's throw that dingo around the table. Dingo. I've been waiting for you to ask. Hey, why don't you hand around the bottle of dingo single malt? Dingo single malt. Why don't you? Ah, okay. Yeah, we've got one of the old straw man thing here, some pagan ritual being a... Wicker man? Is it the wicker man? Is it the bees? That is actually the original Wicker Man. It's a great movie. Good little piece of folk horror. The dingo distillery. Did they know? What? Did they know that dingo is a funny word? It's got to be a funny word in Ireland, too, just the name. There's a lot of great words in Ireland. We've seen all these Irish words. I'll give you a wee dingo. They don't think that's silly at all. That's actually a hooligan beating up another hooligan after a football match. The town of Dingle has probably been around for what? Like thousands of years. Yeah. People have been- Long predates, honey. Yeah. School boy. Yeah. We can't stop laughing. There's no way it predates the school boys who lived in Dingle were ashamed of themselves. People have been laughing at that name for 900 years. Yeah. There's also a dongle. Can you handle that? Is there? I think so. Yeah. The dongle is a great word. Well, what do you guys think of this whiskey from distillery? I'm not going to say the name of again. The immature bastard. I've never had this stuff on the shelf before too. Probably. Do people give this as gifts? Yeah, we dangle. It's an $80 bottle. It's perfect for gifting. Nice. What do you think? Smells nice. A little peppery, a little light. It turns into lemon custard and then there's a smoky undercurrent that you don't expect. There's some cool baking spice, a little bit of nutmeg. Yeah. Oh, I'm the nutmeg for sure. It's beautiful whiskey. It's weighty on the palate. It's weighty, but it's refreshing too. Yeah. Refreshing fruit. Compared to what we've been drinking, there's definitely some weight there. We got a couple of tealing handpicked single malts. The handpicks we get from tealing are typically either single pot still or single malt. We have done a single grain handpick before. Does single pot still also mean from one distillery? Yes, single pot still. So single pot still. Triple distilled, three pot stills. It's made in three pot stills, but it's a single pot still. Dang it. Because it comes from one distillery. Single distillery, pot still, triple distilled, three pot stills. They're leaving out the word distillery there. That's the key. That's the takeaway. They use three pots in their single pot still whiskey. Correct. The comma is key. Yeah. But this is a single malt still. Whereas most Irish whiskey is going to be largely like bourbon casks and sherry casks. Tealing does a lot of interesting finishes. Get the barrel hook up. So this is a pot still, but also a single malt. No, this is a single malt. We were just riffing. Oh, this is just regular single malt. This is not a handpick. This is not a handpick. So this is 92 proof tealing single malt. Nonchal filtered. 59.99. A lot of chocolate. Yes, there is. Chocolate and pears. Yeah. There's like an extremely subtle, again, like clovey, almost like licorice-y, old-timey candy. Like that Black Jack gum. I was going to say black Jack gum. And whore hound. But. Yeah. No, it is. It's like root beer, but dialed down a little in the intensity. Like a little bit, almost like tongue numbing. That's a win. I got Greg mentioning whore hound candy on the podcast. I went to Living History Farms too. But yeah, this is excellent. That's fun. For 60 bucks. Excuse me, miss, where's your stick candy display? The rock candy? Yeah. Yeah. What's next? You want to do this tequila cask? Yeah, let's do the tequila cask. The selection of Teeling hand picks is constantly changing because we do a lot of them, and there's always something interesting coming. We've got a couple of really cool ones. Teeling does a peated whiskey called Black Pits. We found some casks in their warehouse that were finished in pineapple rum barrels. Whoa. We have that coming. Is it the pineapple rum I'm thinking of or is it a different pineapple rum? It sure is. Nice. That is the pineapple rum, the Stiggins. Quite fancy. One of the things with Irish whiskey that always stands out to me is how much of the barrel comes through especially when it's a fresher barrel. You could definitely get that citrusy agave note right away. I'm getting that like buttery kind of like that buttery citrus like crushed agave like a good Reposado. Very cool. Yeah. I mean, if you just poured this and said, what is this? I could see someone going a Reposado Tequila. Yeah. It smells awesome. Prevalent. There's still a fair amount of this around. This is a Cast Strength, so it's 100 and almost 118 proof. Geez. That is delicious and intense. Yeah. Well, do you know what kind of entry proof they work with for these? Especially the grain whiskeys are distilled to up to 94.9% alcohol. So that's close. It's still maintaining some flavor from the grain. With pot stills, you're not seeing that kind of. So with Irish whiskey, we'll say that they distill up to that, but you're not really seeing that with pot stills, that's all column distilled. So it could potentially be like much higher than the, it's like higher than bourbon, like 125. Do you know? Let me look. Industry, standard industry range is 110 to 125. Okay. I asked because I know obviously the climate there doesn't get very hot. So for it to be cast strength but lower, I was curious if it, I assumed it probably went in lower than, you know. That's a good question. I'll have to find out more about that. But anyway, what did you guys think of this? It's good. I mean, tequila drinkers need to try this. They find it very interesting. A lot of pepper, like real peppery, like I would expect from a tequila too. Yeah. It has the fruity essence of tequila, but clean on the nose. And then on the palate, the wildness comes out. Yeah. And it's totally unrestrained. Like this, I could see this getting mixed down and still being really flavorful. But at full force, it's good. It's got that really buttery, toffee finish though. Yeah. Yeah. Then with agave spice and that, I don't know, vegetal punch along with the undercurrent of the fruitiness from the grain. This would be delightful alongside some crunching munch or perhaps poppycock. Always going with the toffee popcorns. Or some local garrots. Yeah. There you go. So yeah, that's single malt, Irish single malt. If you're a big fan of scotch, single malt scotch, you should definitely be checking these out. There's a lot of commonality, but enough differences to keep it interesting. Cool. So the next category is the one that is uniquely Irish. 31:58 Single Pot Still You're not going to find whiskey around the world made like this. And it's single pot still Irish whiskey. We can start passing around. Let's start with the Powers. Powers Three Swallows. So single pot still whiskey, like I said, is uniquely Irish. This comes from when the British were colonizing Ireland and they were taxing, here come the Irish politics, they were taxing malt. So what the Irish, Irish have always been a step ahead of the British. Always. To get around that, they started using unmalted barley as part of their mash bill. So single pot still has to be a minimum 30% unmalted barley, 30% malted barley, and then 5% can be other grains. So obviously, there's going to be more of one or the other, depending on the distillery. But what that does is that unmalted barley brings a ton of weight to the palate. So these are like, these are very hefty, texturally, whiskies. And then there's usually a good amount of like pepper and spice from that unmalted barley as well. Does that mean a different kind of sugar that's less susceptible to conversion? What does that mean? It's just that you're not developing the enzyme. So you have starches, possibly in like a different form. Like more primal? Yeah. More direct from the grain and that. Right, right. It smells big. So Powers. Look at the legs on that. Powers' Middleton Distillery, which we've tasted something from them already. Jamison. Yeah. More oily, more intense. A little less graceful. It's more of a knuckle-drager. But like really, like just such a rich style and just very unique. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it that way. I'd still think this is graceful, but in a weightier, more in a plusher. It still has some very refined depth of character to it. Grizzly Bear Ballerina. Ridiculous. I didn't say dancing on a ball. That would make it cheap. Well, this is an exquisite whiskey. So I wouldn't, I don't know, I just want knuckle dragging. Come on. I mean, like even knuckle draggers can be intellectuals. The finish on this, I think has some really nice, like when the flavor is meld to the point where you can't necessarily totally pull it out, but it kind of created its own harmony of some different fruit character with floral hints. I don't know. This is a phenomenal whiskey. This is great. If you're a big fan of either Red Breast or the Spot whiskeys, Powers is the same distillery. It's single pot still from that distillery, much like the Spot whiskeys and Red Breast are. So if you haven't had Powers before, give it a shot. Especially their pot still whiskeys are excellent and somewhat overlooked by Irish whiskey drinkers. Why is it three swallow? That's a good question. Just because it has three birds on it? No, you can take it in three. Three gulps. I could, but I'm a pro. What's the price point like on this? I think 50. Let me double check. They have another expression called John Lane, which is, I believe, cast strength. Also very good. Yeah. $49.99. Yep. $49.99? Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. $50 bucks for this? Named after the 19th century coachman who carried small flasks on long cold journeys with just enough liquid for each of the three men to have a single warming swallow. Oh, look at that. It also does, yeah, but enough to have a good swallow, but enough to interfere with work. Back then, their three swallows flagon was like this. Not enough to interfere with work, 20 imperial abscesses. Let's do a regular Red Breast, start with that, the red top, yeah. Red Breast, single pot still, age 12 years. This is probably the most famous single pot still whiskey in the world. This one's coming in at $64.99. All right, let's talk about this. This thing's more, it seems more thinky. Roger, disagree? Much more indulgent. You know, this is, is that cherry richness, dark fruit. For sure. Fruit salad. This is such a nice, like, I always view this as like an after dinner kind of drink. That just pops right at the end, like so much, like, intense fruit. Yep. Like cooked fruit, but like fruit cocktail, like from the can even a little bit. That's really good. Yeah. With lots of extra pink cherries. Yeah. Fruits of the forest pie. Fruits of the forest pie. I never heard that. Sounds awesome. Like strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, sometimes a little apple. It's like, oh cool. Let's do the Moscatel Redbreast, that blue box there. This is new from Redbreast, 119.99. What a beautiful color. Wow. Box is gorgeous. It's somewhere between Tiffany and Azure. Redbreast still maintains a pretty direct relationship with Lostile, right? They have that Lostile edition that I think comes out every year. So this is 119.99. This is my first time trying this whiskey. Moscatel Wine Cask Finish. They're like, hey, we'll see your fruity whiskey and fruit it up some more. Wow. Holy cow. Pineapple upside down cake. Wow. That is rich. I really like that. 92 proof. It's viscous. It is. It's candy. It's like a thick whiskey. It is. You're right. That is dessert whiskey. That's nice. Very delicious, but rich. Yeah. Very rich. Yeah. What would you do with this besides sip on it? I would put it on ice cube. Yeah. That is it. Then I would drink it faster than it deserves to be drunk. I like that a lot. There's like spice. There's good balancing spice throughout the palate too. I want this next to like coconut cake with like some sort of like passion fruit curd or something with some acidity. Sounds great, Raj. Maybe some key lime pie or something a little less exotic, but same type of thing. Cream, acidity. That's a great whiskey. What's that? Tealing Potstool. Let's try that. All right. That's just like a one-off from Red Breast, right? Yeah, it's like a just came in, I believe, just came in last week, Iberian series. Nice. Well, usually I justify buying a Red Breast around Christmas, but a couple of months early. Guess it's happening now. It is the only month you're allowed to drink Irish whiskey in. Yeah. March. Yeah, that's an excuse. I usually just buy, like, you know, a good standard one for around St. Patrick's Day. Why not treat myself? Yeah, treat yourself. Do like a, you could do like a Poilermaker with this and like Guinness Foreign Extras out. That's funny. Man, that Red Breast was good. Yeah, the tealing is also good, but it's hard to follow the, that Mascatel finish. This smells more spicy, like more baked confection. What is that? It's like powdered sugar on the palette for me too. Personally, I think one of the most fascinating things about Irish whiskey, the really nice ones, is the fruit character is like, how are they achieving this like peach orchard fruit, pear, or even sometimes tropical, like pineapple. It's all over the map. And I guess sometimes it has to do with like how they tune their stills. But this one for me in particular is just like peach and nectarine. Yeah. Crazy. Oh, 100%. I think a lot of that's the triple distillation. When you're doing that third distillation, you're really, you're really like accentuating or preserving those kind of higher like fruit notes, I think. Triple on the pot? Triple post. Yeah. So triple distill will be triple. And that again, tradition not required. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Most distilleries are triple distilling. This is really good. And this is a non-age statement, right? Non-age stated, 60 bucks. Just good whiskey, right? The fruit is balanced. Awesome. Grain and spice. That nectarine. It's big. It's almost like peach rings. It's so intense, you know, that that's good. This really, again, it being, I seem to gravitate towards some of these things that I feel are misunderstood and underappreciated. And Irish whiskey really continues to be undervalued because some of these are just absolutely phenomenal. So, you know, some of these are a little more money, but again, comparatively to the kind of money people are spending on rise and bourbons and stuff right now, they're affordable. And you don't have to hunt them. They're there. And you can buy them and drink them. And then you can buy another one when you finish that bottle. We've seen a really big variety of different Irish whiskeys here. And I think that might be part of the consumer's hesitancy because... There's a learning curve. There's a learning curve. And to know which one is built in the direction that you want to go. Right. But just the different categories that you showed us kind of... Well, and that's the... What you're saying is 100% true. But once you kind of understand the four basic types, I just think it means there's more to explore. Like, how do you innovate in bourbon? Throw barrels on it. Right. And then you can't call it bourbon because it's finished in a different... Oh, right, right, right. But you can call it bourbon finished in X, Y, or Z. Age it longer. But for traditional bourbon, it's like you play with the mashbills. A silly comic book label. Sure. And we all love bourbon. I think everyone sitting around this table probably has drank some bourbon in the last seven days, right? You know, and it's just expand your horizons a little. 42:08 Peated Irish Whiskey And we're going to end. I don't know if I've ever come to a general podcast where we're tasting a bunch of different things and not had something that was peated. So we're going to stick with tradition and have Black Pits, which is Tealings peated Irish whiskey. Yeah, Roger, you thought you were going to get out of this. This is a single malt, so we're going back to the single malt category, but we wouldn't have been able to taste those pot stills if we tried those first. Pitted single malt. If you're not going to do one thing and you're curious about it, my two cents is that go try pot still, because that is singularly unique and you're not going to find it in some other categories the way it shines here. Rich and robust, all of the examples are big. This would be great in this tealing single pot still would be, replace the vodka and espresso martini. I think that would be awesome. You know that's one of my talking points with bourbon. Yeah. So yeah, you're right. This would be really good in that context. If you ever do find yourself in Dublin, go to the tealing distillery and like me have eight Irish coffees. Eight Irish coffees? Well, they just kept giving them to me. What were you like after that? I'm full of Irish coffee. What do you mean? It's uppers and downers. Well, they're not super strong, but they make a really good Irish coffee at tealing. All right. The Black Pits. Oh, there it is. Who makes it? This is tealing. Like drinking a Sharpie. I'd say it's more attractive than that. Well, it's got sotarin. You might be getting that kind of what you're saying, because I just smelled it, and when you said that, I'm like, well, it's ruined for me. Sorry. But no, I think that might be the play of the pea and the sotarin. It's like opening a box of Chuck Taylors. No, it's got that iodiney-peatiness there, and that is manifesting for me as a Sharpie, or one of those other big black markers. I think there's nice fruit and grain qualities underneath what you guys are describing. This is so good. I mean, some people, I personally like to smell Sharpies. If you notice me sniffing around the old office. You don't get much done after about two o'clock. Jokes on them. They thought they were making them so people wouldn't sniff them. That's a gorgeous whiskey. This one's $69.99. There is some nice sweetness. Brown sugar. Brown sugar. I mean, just like that. Touch of bonfire, of course. Then just like, yeah, sweet peat. Still a little too much peat for me. I like it a lot. Ancient decaying matter. I mean, keep in mind that- That you light on fire. Bog butter. The first whiskey I ever enjoyed in my entire life was LaFoie-10. Yeah. And I loved it from the get-go, so I just don't have a delicate palate. I'm trying to come up with some flattering descriptors here. It's like earthy. Yeah. I definitely get the whole medicine cabinet descriptor, which you kind of either like this or you don't. And it's fine if you do, it's fine if you don't. But what's underneath that is this brown sugar, graham cracker, rice spice kind of thing. I'm getting like smoked peach. Smoked peach. I have had smoked peach. I like it. Yeah. Those are good. Vanilla ice cream and mint. Yeah. It was awesome. Next time you're barbecuing, you're going to blow your mind, grill some peaches and pineapple rings and put brown sugar and butter on them, let them get kind of smoky and caramelized. Pretty good. Sounds good. All right. Put it over some vanilla ice cream. Summer barbeque season is going to be right around the corner. Irish whiskey. We tasted every category, but we barely scratched the surface for what's out there and interesting finishes and new brands coming all the time. Yeah, yeah. We're in a little bit of a renaissance here with Irish whiskey. We're seeing some cool stuff. So check it out. Get out there, buy a few bottles. It's that time of year. A lot like Scotch, they've got a pretty big palette to paint with and a big canvas to paint on and that pot still, that style that nobody else in the world is still doing. It's pretty cool. Yeah. You know what that last whiskey would be good with? You guys ever had? Obviously, you haven't, Greg, but smoked corned beef. Like pastrami? No, people just take a corned beef and smoke it instead of smoking a biscuit. Is that not what pastrami is? No, no, no. Pastrami is cured, but yeah, it's similar. Okay. But pastrami always has like a giant pepper rub on it that's very definitive. But anyway, I bring it up because I know I joke around that I don't like peaty stuff. I enjoy some peated whiskeys, especially if it's kind of like how I would try to get people to drink smoked beers and everyone tells me to go jump. What I often recommend is trying them with food. And for whatever reason, drinking whisky with food is not... People don't do it and they should. So try some of these... try some whiskeys with your food, especially smoky ones. Yeah. You'd be surprised how well they pair. If I have any whisky with a meal, I kind of prefer like a highball. But like with a whisky like this, that highball is going... like mixing it with club soda is going to really... it's going to soften... I would guess that it's going to soften the whisky a little bit, soften some of that peat, but also bring out some of the underlying flavors that are buried by the peat. Yeah. As your drink with a meal can be very pleasant. As much as I love whisky, the thought of having a three ounce pour of whisky next to like a steak is a lot for me. It's awesome. I like something... I like more of a fresh drink, but I'd probably need a beer as well. We have a beer as well. Oh, okay. So yeah, then I'm on board. You got me back. Yeah. That's Irish Whisky, the overview of Irish Whisky, why we should be drinking it and drinking more of it. It's a great category and it's a little bit underexplored by some of our whiskey customers. We got to do a St. Patrick's podcast without having to taste a single milk. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I have one more bottle. No. Cut it. We got to get out of here now. No creams. Thanks, Dan. That was an awesome one. Thanks, Dan. This was good. Aaron Gebra. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a review and spread the good word about Barrel to Bottle The Binny's Podcast. We will be back again with another topic in the realm of beer, wine or spirits. Until then, I'm Roger. I'm Greg. I'm Jim. I'm Dan. Keep tasting. Ireland. Wow. We Shalali prices but good. Oh, hey, what a coincidence. I never noticed that. Yeah. We've been doing wordplay at this company since the 60s. If I had known that 10 years ago, I probably would have gotten a different job. There's no puns rule. Dan doesn't like puns. Not a pun guy. I think it's because I don't get them till it's too late, and I just look like an idiot every time someone makes a pun. I know because my first reaction is to shame the person who made the pun instead of to try to come up with my own pun. But in this situation, it's usually the owner of the company. Yeah, that's true. True. What's the but good here? I don't understand what the hell this means. I don't know. What are you talking about? What's the word shillelagh? What is that price is like a shillelagh is a bludgeon. Yeah. Okay. So it's actually not really a pun necessarily. It's just not a pun. Yeah. It's just we beat the shit out of prices, but good. Yeah, he's holding a shillelagh, the leprechaun. The leprechaun, that abusive monster of a leprechaun is wielding a shillelagh. He's going to take it to the apparently that hand holding dollars. Look out, hand holding dollars. I like that it says our crazy price is it's a backwards K. Yeah. Yeah, it was a different time. This K is kind of looks like it says x-ray. Yeah. X-ray. X-razi. That's weird. A six pack of Highlife 89 cents. Hell yeah. Those were the days. I like how sometimes brands exist and other times brands fade into obscurity. Irish Mist, still number one. Yeah. Early times making a comeback. Guinness, $1.99. Guinness on there? Six King size. Is that lower right hand the old King of Kentucky? Lower right hand. Famous bargain, King Whiskey. Bottled by Old Forrester. Yeah. I've tasted the old King of Kentucky and it was a blended whiskey back in the day. Now, it's one of the hottest commodities you can get. They regurgitated that brand as the special hyper-limited bourbon production. I don't know what our phone number was. It says BI8-2200. I don't know what the BI stands for. BI8-2200. All right. All right. Well, we're here to talk about whiskey, not beer. Irish whiskey. Irish whiskey. Hang on. Let's do the start this thing like it's actually a show. That was a great cold open. You missed your cold open. What was a great cold open? What part of that? It was 18 minutes of cold open? Rambling about our old prices and our old store. Now, guess what? You just got a graphic for the post. Yeah, that's true. We should use that. We haven't really used that on social. But then someone's going to try to get us to expect a high life for $0.81. I want my Kentucky King for $2.49 a bottle.