by Lew Bryson
Whiskey had to be made from grain.
A product that was all aged grain spirits was to be labeled “straight whiskey.”
If high-proof unaged grain distillate (“neutral spirits”) was flavored to create a whiskey, it had to be labeled as “blended.”
It was a decision that has shaped the flavor and character of bourbon and rye (and all types of whiskey made in America) ever since. There have been changes, but the basic identity — which hearkened back directly to those early barrel-aged whiskeys of the 1830s — has remained safe and stable.
Sour mash ferments in cypress tubs at Maker’s Mark.
Whiskey, Made in Ireland
Unlike the stories of Scotch, American rye, and bourbon whiskey, Irish whiskey is not one of largely unplanned chance. It did start out that same way, back in the mists of the early days of monastic culture in Ireland. But the Irish whiskey we know today is a different spirit from that unaged essence, changed by currents of history, business, and politics that, in the end, are perhaps not so different from unplanned chance, despite the appearance of purpose.
The question of how Irish whiskey evolved is further complicated by a basic identity crisis. There are currently only three major Irish distilleries — Midleton, Bushmills, and Cooley — and a large Tullamore Dew distillery under construction, but they have a number of different brands, and they are different enough that we can’t even agree on what Irish whiskey is. All of the following might be what Irish whiskey is . . . except it isn’t.
Irish whiskey is triple distilled . . . but only if the Irish whiskey you’re talking about is from the Midleton or Bushmills distilleries.
Irish whiskey is unpeated . . . unless it’s Cooley’s peated Connemara whiskey.
Irish whiskey is made with unmalted barley . . . but only if it’s made from the single pot still spirit from Midleton.
Irish whiskey is blended . . . unless you’re drinking a Bushmills or Tullamore Dew single malt, or an unblended pot-still whiskey from Midleton, such as Redbreast. A huge old copper pot still rests on the grounds outside the Old Midleton Distillery in County Cork, Ireland.
Knock your head against it long enough, and you’ll realize that the glib answer is the correct one: Irish whiskey is whiskey that’s made in Ireland. Still, most Irish whiskeys share a smooth, luscious approachability (which is likely why Irish whiskey is so often enjoyed neat) that is the result of that evolution, and perhaps, more than the other whiskeys of the world, Irish has not so much a common formula as a common character.
That’s not how it started out, though, and it started out a long, long time ago, probably the longest time ago. Any serious student of distilling history recognizes that grain-based distillation probably began in Ireland, led by the eclectic interests of Irish monks. The Irish monastic culture was a rich one, a lighthouse of learning far on the western edge of Christendom that attracted scholars from across Europe.
One of the secrets the monks brought back from their own travels was that of distillation, used to create perfumes, essences, and medicinal elixirs. Distillation had already been used to make wine-based beverages, and in Ireland’s cooler climate it was a short step to distilling beer to make usquebaugh, also seen as uisce beatha, the Gaelic words for what was known in other places in Europe as aqua vitae, eau-de-vie, akvavit: the “water of life,” or perhaps “lively water.” (The monks may have been dabbling in alchemy; compare aqua vitae to other formulations of the alchemist: aqua fortis, “fortified water” or nitric acid, and aqua regia, “regal water” or nitrohydrochloric acid.)
An idea like this couldn’t be kept bottled up, and usquebaugh soon crossed the narrow sea to Scotland. As more people made it, and drank it, and said it, usquebaugh, pronounced (roughly) “ish-ka b’ah,” got shortened to just “ish-ka” and then twisted a bit to “whisky”; listening to anyone who’s had a few too many drams makes it easy to understand how that could happen.
Back in Ireland, meanwhile, the monks and others concentrated on making the stuff rather than naming it. Irish whiskey was being made from malted barley and flavored with spices and fruits. Much like Scottish whisky, there were small farm distillers, legal or illegal depending on the changing laws (and the distiller’s temperament), and large commercial distillers grew up in the towns: Dublin, Cork, Tullamore. Unlike the Lowland Scottish distillers, however, these distillers — with names such as Jameson, Powers, Tullamore Dew — would come out on top in the quality competition and keep the illegal distillers of the clear, unaged spirit still known today as poitín (“potcheen”) in a minority position.
There were to be two major differences in how the Irish distillers did it. Where the Lowlanders addressed the volume issue of the small still by seizing on Coffey’s continuous still for making whiskey 24 hours a day, as fast as you could pour fermented wash into the still, the Irish took a different, more direct path: they simply made the farmer’s pot still bigger. A lot bigger, as you can see by the monsters on display outside the Jameson/Irish Distillers Ltd. (IDL) distillery near Cork and the old Jameson distillery on Bow Street in Dublin (now a museum and tasting center).
The other difference was driven by a factor we’ve seen as a surprisingly major driver in whiskey character: tax law. In this case, it was the malt taxes imposed on brewers and distillers by the UK government. The tax was first imposed in the late seventeenth century and changed through the eighteenth century; it was a policy tool used to encourage and discourage distilling and brewing in different areas of the UK and so was constantly being tweaked by Parliament. At some point Irish distillers decided to include a substantial amount of unmalted raw barley in the mashbill of their whiskey, thereby dodging this heavy excise.
(At least, that’s the common story. It’s worth noting that this is also the common explanation of why Guinness Stout is brewed with unmalted roasted barley, and it turns out not to be true. Irish brewers were not allowed to use unmalted barley when these taxes were in place, and it’s likely that Guinness was later brewed that way for the flavor. Whatever the reason, Irish distillers did put unmalted barley in their mash, and IDL still does.)
The Irish spirit, distilled in large copper pot stills from a mash of malted and raw barley, has a taste like no other, whether it is a serendipitous result of tax laws or a deliberate formulation. You only need enter the brewhouse at IDL’s Midleton distillery to understand why. I’ve been in over a thousand brewhouses in breweries and distilleries in Europe and the Americas, and I’ve never smelled the fresh, intense aroma I smelled as soon as I walked in the door at Midleton. It was like fresh-cut grass and barely ripe fruit with a strong underlay of hot cereal, an incredibly appealing smell of burgeoning nature.
The whiskey that comes from this mash and these stills is called single pot still whiskey. But that’s a new name, imposed on the industry by regulations that shied away from the old nomenclature: pure pot-still whiskey. Apparently “pure” is a word that is no longer allowed to be applied to whiskey.
Call it what you will, this whiskey is at the heart of IDL’s blended whiskeys and is the heart and the whole of a few straight-up single pot still bottlings, such as Redbreast, the independently bottled Green Spot and Yellow Spot, and some new expressions from IDL such as Powers John’s Lane and Barry Crockett Legacy (named for the long-time master distiller at Midleton). You can easily detect the fresh, fruity nature in these bottlings.
But Irish whiskey would change again after pure pot-still whiskey was developed; there were several changes, unfortunately brought on by external disaster. As Irish distillers went big in their delicious distillations, Scotch whisky was humming along with its accessibly blended bottlings, and both types were selling magnificently around the world. Then the roof fell in.
The Irish struggle for independence, from the Easter Rising of 1916 through the Irish Civil War, concluding in the establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1948, had a throttling effect on Irish whiskey, which had developed a huge export market. Sales to the wo
rldwide British Commonwealth dropped precipitously as relations deteriorated and essentially ceased during the Anglo-Irish trade war in the 1930s.
At the same time, American Prohibition crushed sales to the U.S. market. There was a small amount of illegal shipment from Ireland, but nowhere near what there had been before the victory of the temperance fanatics.
Bushmills would change in response to these problems. Once a double-distilled, lightly peated whiskey (but always malt; Bushmills never made pure pot still), in the 1930s Bushmills would move to a lighter, unpeated, triple-distilled whiskey. It survived, when others in the north would close.
But overall, the closure of Irish whiskey’s two biggest markets and the general restriction of trade from the two world wars, combined with most Irish distillers’ steadfast refusal to adopt the milder blended style of Scotch whisky, pushed Irish distilling to the brink in the 1960s. The remaining distillers in the Republic merged in 1966 to form Irish Distillers Ltd. They built a modern joint distillery in Midleton in 1975, and 11 years later they bought out Bushmills in the north. All Irish whiskey was now made by one company — one company, against the world.
And finally, under this tremendous pressure to survive, IDL turned to the lighter, blended whiskey that would lead, eventually, to the incredible growth Irish whiskey has experienced over the past 20 years. Jameson was reformulated as a lighter, blended, triple-distilled whiskey . . . but the center of it was still pure pot still.
When Cooley opened in 1989, it made a throwback double-distilled whiskey, a peated whiskey, and eventually bottle-aged grain whiskey. Bushmills now makes single malt whiskeys in various expressions, aged in varied woods. Midleton makes an increasingly dizzying array of whiskeys with four different versions of pure — excuse me, single — pot still spirit at the center of the blends and minglings of the pot still whiskeys in its bottlings.
Irish whiskey is a variety . . . which grew, oddly enough, out of a monopoly. It has changed, vitally, and relatively recently, and that change has put it on a rapid rise in global popularity that has distillers scrambling to keep up.
Canada: The Splendid Blended Spirit
Like the other major whiskey types, Canadian whisky began as a scattershot of small distilleries, with farmers and millers turning bulky, excess grain into raw spirit for barter and sale over the horizon (and as always, some personal use). The differences in Canada were related to the much greater distances and the much less dense population, which helped lead to a quicker consolidation.
Before we see where it came from, let’s talk briefly about what it is. Canadian whisky is a bit difficult to get a handle on, though not as indefinable as Irish whiskey. Canadian whisky is, by and large, a blended whisky, with two major components. There is the base whisky, a spirit that has been distilled to a very high proof, around 94 percent alcohol. Then there is the flavoring whisky, a lower-proof distillate.
These whiskies are aged separately at some Canadian distilleries but as a blend at others; there are almost as many ways to do it as there are distillers. They use different grains; the predominant one is corn, but all use at least a small amount of rye, and Alberta Distillers uses almost all rye. A distiller may make and use several different types of base whisky, depending on the type of grain used. Proportions of aged base and flavoring whiskies vary and make up different expressions.
This is not “blended” in the American sense, meaning straight whiskey cut with grain neutral spirit. Canadian, like good Scotch whisky, is blended from a variety of aged whiskies of different character. In Canadian whisky’s case, it has been more affected by political geography than physical geography. While the earliest small distillers set up shop on their farms, mills, or homes, they were relatively quickly put out of business by large distillers: Molson (at an early stage in its history it was Canada’s largest distiller as well as a growing brewery), Gooderham and Worts, Corby, Hiram Walker, Seagram, and J. P. Wiser.
The large distillers were able to grow and thrive through export trade, historically the solid base of Canada’s economy. They adapted the column still. In its earliest form, several large distillers used the “box of rocks” still: a wooden column filled with large, smooth stones that allowed for evaporation and reevaporation — reflux — of the spirit as steam passed upward through the box. The small distillers were not big enough to take advantage of the efficiencies of the column still and opportunities of the export markets, and they withered.
Large distillers, though, need large markets to sell to in volume. That’s why Canadian whisky makers learned about blending at about the same time the Scots did: aging and blending a variety of whiskies made for a smoother, more palatable blend that was desired by more customers. The Canadians took a mix of pot-still and column-still whiskies, aged them all separately, and then blended the aged whiskies for different flavors. Blending worked, and worked so well that it became the template for Canadian whisky.
But they also studied the same German and Dutch distilling traditions that had informed American whiskey making, and from them they learned that even a small addition of rye to the mashbill makes for a big dose of flavor and aroma in the spirit. This little distilling secret would shape Canadian whisky as much as blending did. Rye grew just fine in the soils and climate of Canada, and even as the base grain shifted from wheat to full-on rye itself, and then largely to corn at present, rye has been a constant in Canadian whisky, adding spiciness to the sweet character.
That flavor sat well with Canadians, and with their export markets. Canadian whisky found a huge market in America, especially during the Civil War, when American distillers were largely shut down. It still sells strongly, and after years of slowly declining sales (with the exception of Crown Royal, which continued to grow), it is showing a turnaround. The sweet/spicy flavor makes it a favorite in cocktails and highballs.
Any discussion of Canadian whisky history has to address Prohibition (although Canadian distillers at the time largely chose not to; most destroyed their records from the period and denied participation in illegal exports). The conventional wisdom is that Canadian whisky is what it is because of Prohibition, that the lack of homemade whiskey in America for 13 years (and 10 months and 20 days, but who’s counting?) created an easy market for an established whisky industry situated just across a long, relatively undefended border.
Hiram Walker’s Canadian Club distillery was, after all, on the very banks of the Detroit River, right across from the Motor City, and there was a frequent passage of small boats. This illicit business made Canadian distillers millions and made their whisky huge. So we’re told, and so we believe.
The fact is, Canadian whisky was already big business, and Prohibition made selling it openly illegal. Sales in an illegal market may be substantial for a distiller, but they come with obvious problems; for instance, the smuggler and the retailer get most of the profit, since they’re running most of the risk. Yes, Boardwalk Empire shows huge piles of Canadian Club being unloaded for illegal distribution, but it’s a television drama, not a documentary. Enforcement was tightening, and the freewheeling smugglers of the early 1920s found it increasingly harder to get the goods across the border. It’s telling that Hiram Walker’s sons sold their distillery and brands in 1926 for a price that barely covered the value of the aging whisky in the warehouses.
Canadian whisky seems to be on the verge of a resurgence as distillers are realizing the potential of the variety of aged stocks they have. If they lose a bit of that renowned Canadian modesty, the world may have another chance to learn about this splendid, blended spirit.
Japan: An Apt Pupil
Unlike the other major whisky areas, we can pinpoint exactly when whisky started in Japan, and who was responsible, and exactly why it was done the way it was. When Japan was opened to the West in the mid-1800s after 200 years of isolation, one of the things that came to the islands was whisky.
It was accepted, and imports grew, but one Japanese whisky importer, Shinjiro Torii, wasn�
��t satisfied. He wanted to make Japanese whisky. Torii had the connections and the money, but he needed a distiller. He found Masataka Taketsuru, a young man who had traveled to Scotland to study chemistry and wound up becoming very interested in whisky, distillation, and Scotland; he fell in love and married a Scottish woman, Rita Cowan. After working at Hazelburn and Longmorn, he returned to Japan with Rita. In 1923 he went to work for Torii at his new Suntory distillery in Yamazaki, between Osaka and Kyoto.
The whisky Taketsuru made for Torii was first launched in 1929. Shirofuda (“White Label”) was unabashedly Scotch-like: big, bold, smoky with peat. It was too much for the market. Taketsuru left Suntory in 1934, and Torii switched course to a new, milder spirit he called Kakubin (“Square Bottle”). Kakubin was much more successful, and the blend is still made today. Taketsuru would open his own distillery, in Yoichi on the northern island of Hokkaido, where he would make his beloved smoky whisky.
Now, these whiskies, and the ones that would follow after, are malt whiskies. The base of the tree of Japanese whisky is firmly rooted in Taketsuru-san’s Scottish education; indeed, his Scottish family ties. Japanese whisky is made with malt imported from Scotland. It is a combination of blends and single malts. Is it simply Scotch whisky made in Japan?
Most definitely, it is not. Torii wanted to make Japanese whisky, and so he did. Former Suntory master distiller Mike Miyamoto tried to explain the difference to me. “Shinjiro Torii wanted to create whisky to appeal to the Japanese palate, a delicate palate,” he said. “We like well-balanced, mild, and sophisticated whisky. We introduced the blending concept of single malts. Some say it’s not single malt, but the rules say it is, if it’s from one distillery. It makes a very balanced single malt.”
Miyamoto is a bit vague there, but taste is somewhat subjective. He does put his finger on one thing that makes Japanese whisky quite different from Scotch: blending single malts. Scotch whisky comes from about 100 distilleries, and almost all of them trade spirit back and forth in cashless transactions for blending purposes: a smoky one here, an older fruity one there, some frisky young sweet stuff for the base. Japanese whisky makers, with only a bare handful of distilleries, don’t have that option.