From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Just Don't Call It Scotch
How I became a Qualified Irish Whiskey Taster.
BUSHMILLS, Northern Ireland--It's not easy being a missionary.
For the better part of my adult life I have toiled in the vineyards in search of believers. But the spirits whose virtues I sing are to be found not in the Good Book but inside a good bottle: Irish whiskey, that is. In an America whose heathen palates have been weaned on bourbon, rye and scotch, the harvest of new converts has, alas, been small.
Hence this summer's pilgrimage to the place where it all started, the little town on the northern tip of County Antrim that is home to the world's oldest licensed distillery: Old Bushmills.
How to explain to the uninitiated the glories of this smooth amber fluid? Joyce wrote of "the light music of whiskey falling into a glass--an agreeable interlude." Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary defined whiskey as a "compound distilled spirit," adding that "the Irish sort is particularly distinguished for its pleasant and mild flavour." An old Irish toast gets straight to the point: "Too much of anything is good for nothing. Too much good whiskey is barely enough." Amen.
Here inside the Bushmills distillery this rainy Irish day, our guide is an affable Northerner named Brian. Brian speaks with the confidence that we the aspiring can only admire, literally walking us through the process that takes Irish barley, grinds it up (whence the expression "grist for the mill") and distills it three times before putting it in casks to mature. At the end of the tour, he announces with a twinkle, there will be a taste test. "For those of you who are not yet Irish whiskey drinkers," he says, glancing at my five- and seven-year-olds, "there will be soft drinks."
Though the Bushmills license dates to 1608 and King James I, Brian confirms that the Irish had been producing whiskey--spelled properly here, with an "e"--for perhaps a thousand years before that. How many Jack Daniel's or Johnny Walker drinkers, I wonder, appreciate that they owe their favorite tipple to the Irish monks, who in the sixth century brought back from the Middle East the alembic used to distill perfumes but soon adapted it to much more felicitous use? Thus the still was born.
Even the word comes from the Irish: Uisce Beatha, or "water of life." When the invading Anglo-Normans couldn't get their tongues around the Irish phrase, it was corrupted to "whiskey." As Brian tells us, "They found the whiskey easier to swallow than pronounce."
In the American mind, Irish whiskey is often confused with scotch. It is the kind of loose talk they discourage here at the distillery, which, after a short taste test, duly deputized my wife and me Qualified Irish Whiskey Tasters. On the basis of this authority, I can state that the differences boil down to two. While the Scots roast their barley over open peat fires (which gives Scotch its smoky taste) and distill it only twice, the Irish roast their barley in closed kilns and distill it three times.
The oak casks in which the Irish whiskey matures are those once used for bourbon, sherry or port, which helps provide not only the whiskey's color but its flavor. In the process of distillation, a portion is lost to evaporation. This, Brian tells us, is known as "the angels' share."
Toward the end of the 19th century there were more than 100 distilleries in Ireland, but a combination of calamities (Prohibition, Dublin's insane trade war with the British, etc.) reduced the numbers to a handful. Though Irish still remains well behind its Scotch cousins, sales are up after a long dormant period. And a distillery, at Cooley, even began operations in 1989--the first of the 20th century. The whiskey itself is moving upscale, with the gold standard being a Midleton Very Rare produced by Jameson.
Meanwhile, globalization is fast eroding the old battle lines. For an Irish Catholic lad from New Jersey who still has plenty of first and second cousins up north, the town of Bushmills was something of a culture shock, with its Union Jacks and the pictures of King Billy (William of Orange) all out on display for the Protestant marching season. At one time, my relations allow, Bushmills would not have been a whiskey that crossed most Catholic lips.
But Brian deftly refuses to be drawn into sectarian disputes, winking that whiskey is one of the few "ecumenical" things that unite rather than divide Irishmen these days. And why not? After initially holding out, Bushmills in 1972 joined the Irish Distillers Group from down south, and in 1988 the IDA was itself acquired by Pernod Ricard, a French group that also owns Chivas Regal and Wild Turkey.
Just the other day, moreover, the Scotch Malt Whisky Association announced the release--in Scotland!--of an Irish single malt from Cooley's. It's a long way from the kitschy days of yore when the rest of the world all too often relegated Irish whiskey to Irish coffee.
This is heartening news for my happy band of Qualified Irish Whiskey Tasters, who grow steadily merrier as we perform our duties. Our endeavor to spread the whiskey gospel to the far ends of the earth may not always bear fruit. But it sure has its consolations.
Mr. McGurn is The Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer.
