The first taste of our first Whiskey Club bottling

Our first Whiskey Club bottling – an exclusive whiskey for our Club members – will be a 12 yr old Single Grain Irish Whiskey, distilled at Cooley Distillery, matured for 12 years in an ex-bourbon barrel and the last 4 months in an ex-California-style Madeira Cask.

 

 

I assembled a stellar tasting panel to try this whiskey for the first time as we evaluate whether it’s ready to be bottled. The panel was made up of Killowen Distillery founder and distiller Brendan Carty, Two Stacks Irish Whiskey founder Liam Brogan, Irish whiskey historian Fionnan O’Connor and myself Barry Chandler. Watch as we share our thoughts below:

 

 

 

The rain was crashing down on the tin roof of the distillery as we had our first tase and I listened to the feedback. After the camera stopped we kept sampling and playing around with different ABVs. The general consensus was that this whiskey had a wonderfully light and delicate lavender-meets-pot pourri note on the nose and the palate with a lovely wood spice and balanced sweetness to taste. The California-style Madeira cask doesn’t yet seem to have imparted its goodness to the whiskey, perhaps due to its short time in the cask.

It was agreed that while it is close to being ready for bottling, it could do with another few weeks to a month in the cask to see if there are additional dark fruit notes that could come from the cask’s previous fortified wine inhabitant. The team at Two Stacks will send me on another sample closer to the end of December to evaluate it further and another decision will be made at that stage as to when it gets bottled. Exciting times and hopefully you’ll enjoy this journey with us!