Powers Gold Label is a Whiskey of superior quality with its distinctive pot still, spicy and honeyed flavour. Triple distilled and matured in specailly selected American oak casks for richness and complexity.
Redbreast
Redbreast 12 Year Old Irish Whiskey
Redbreast 12 Year Old Irish Whiskey is the quintessential example of premium Irish Whiskey, and considered to be the purest form of the art. With a history dating back to 1903 when John Jameson & Company entered into an agreement with Gilbeys Wines & Spirits Import Company to supply new make whiskey which was then 'bonded' in old sherry and port casks. Single Pot Still whiskey is unique to Ireland and this exciting example is crafted from both malted and unmalted barley and then triple distilled in a traditional copper still. The result is a whiskey of unrivalled richness, complexity and smoothness. Hints of creaminess on the finish round out an true Irish Whiskey of pedigree.
Writers Tears
Writers Tears Pot Still Irish whiskey (700ml)
IRELAND ABV: 40.00%
Writers Tears is a vatting of Pure Pot Still and Single Malt (proportions are a closely guarded secret). It's the creation of Writers Tears proprietor, Bernard Walsh, who enjoys privileged access to the warehouses of certain Irish distillers from where he selects the casks for his own labels. Some years ago he came up with this entirely ‘new’ type of whiskey: a blend of malt and pure pot still (PPS) whiskeys (all other Irish blends contain some proportion of Coffey still grain whiskey). The Pure Pot Still is a style that was once known as the "Champagne of Irish Whiskey" and was traditionally a favourite of Irish writers suffering from writer’s block. Rather poetically, they drank so much of it, some were reputed to have cried tears of whiskey when inspiration finally hit. Although the Pure Pot Still style was once widespread in Ireland, a number of historical factors including the The Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, and prohibition in the United States led to a drastic reduction in the number of Irish distilleries. With this reduction in Irish whiskeys available came the loss in recognition abroad of the pure pot still style itself. The majority of the surviving distilleries began to produce blends and single malts to the detriment of the Pure Pot Still.
Jameson
Jameson Irish Whiskey
Jameson is a blended Irish whiskey produced by the Irish Distillers subsidiary of Pernod Ricard.
The John Jameson and Son Irish Whiskey company was formally established in 1810 when John Jameson and his son (also John Jameson) took ownership of the Bow Street Distillery in Dublin which had originally been built by his wife's cousins the Steins in 1780. Jameson was a Scottish lawyer from Alloa in Clackmannanshire who had married Margaret Haig, a sister of the Haig brothers who owned the Haig distilleries. Margaret Haig was a first cousin of the Steins, a Scottish distilling family, also from Clackmannanshire, with significant distilling interests in Scotland and Dublin. On his marriage to Margaret Haig in 1786, John Jameson moved with his new wife to Dublin to manage the Stein's Bow Street Distillery (which had been established in 1780) for Margaret's Stein uncle. This explains the use of the year 1780 in Jameson marketing as the Bow Street Distillery was where Jameson Irish Whiskey was born.[1] Portraits of John and Margaret Jameson by Sir Henry Raeburn are in the collection of theNational Gallery of Ireland.
Originally one of the six main Dublin Whiskeys, Jameson is now distilled in Cork. In 2013, annual sales topped 4.7 million cases (56.4 million bottles). Jameson is by far the best selling Irish whiskey in the world, as it has been sold internationally since the early 19th century. The United States is the largest market for Jameson Whiskey, with consumption during 2013 up by 12%.
Company history
When John Jameson, a Scottish businessman, became manager of the Stein family Bow Street Distillery in 1786, it was producing about 30,000 gallons annually. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey.
Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canadian border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years]
The introduction of column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid-19th-century enabled increased production that the Irish, still making labour-intensive single pot still whiskey, could not compete with. There was a legal enquiry somewhere in 1908 to deal with the trade definition of whiskey. The Scottish producers won within some jurisdictions, and blends became recognised in the law of that jurisdiction as whiskey. The Irish in general, and Jameson in particular, continued with the traditional pot still production process for many years.
In 1966 John Jameson merged with Cork Distillers and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. In 1976, the Dublin whiskey distilleries of Jameson in Bow Street and in John's Lane were closed following the opening of a New Midleton Distillery by Irish Distillers outside Cork. The Midleton Distillery now produces much of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland under the Jameson, Midleton, Powers, Redbreast, Spot and Paddy labels. The new facility adjoins an old Midleton Distillery, which is now home to the Jameson Experience Visitor Centre and the Irish Whiskey Academy. The Jameson brand was acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1988, when it bought Irish Distillers. The old Jameson Distillery in Bow Street near Smithfield in Dublin now serves as a museum which offers tours and tastings.
In 2008, The Local, an Irish pub in Minneapolis, sold 671 cases of Jameson (22 bottles a day).making it the largest server of Jameson's in the world – a title it maintained for four consecutive years]