When I started in the bar business, there were two…..yes two Irish whiskeys on the market. I’d hear from customers who had been to Erie about all the many others they had tried, but here in the states we had the… well you know who they are.
Now, two decades later, Irish whiskey is the fastest growing spirit category showing mass increasing over the past five years. And it is high time that the world know this spirit as it,as far as I am concerned, where whiskey as we know it today was mastered.
I have my loves, and I am married to them. But recently when I was introduced to Teeling Irish Whiskey, I had to take a second glance, and I felt almost adulterous, as there is something unique here that appealed to my booze soaked heart.
Allow me to digress for a moment….Again when I started tending bar, my Uncle Tony introduced me to bourbon: not the rot gut that i had imbibed underage in the cemetery with friend a mile down from my house I grew up in, but TRUE bourbon and for years I was obsessed in learning all that I could about it. We know from history that the original bourbon makers were Irish and Scottish immigrants who found the perfect water sources in Appalachia to distill whiskey. This then led me to learning about the whiskies of the world, but I always came back to bourbon. However, Irish whiskey always had a special place in my heart and there were occasions, moments that only a dram or Irish was appropriate, like a reverence that very point in time.
Jump ahead a few years as my career took off, I began to lean towards rum. Again I don’t refer to swill: I mean rum. Why rum? Because it is first fricking tasty done right, and two it is the least regulated spirit in the world and left to great interpretation of the place and the time and the people from whom it comes from. Rum is freedom.
So what does all this have to do with Irish Whiskey?
Here it is. Teeling Small Batch Irish Whiskey, bottled at 46 {fc3f376329c99bd779b6ce2458e4c36cbf71a84b322032467f8d6f12beb3a1d6} abv, is smooth, correct, decent, loving, and is like sipping the best of three worlds.
Tech time: Teeling is small batch finished in rum casks in Flor De Cana Rum casks which lends its sweet vanilla and light wood passion to this Irish beauty. And Flor De Cana, as most rum producers, use one time bourbon barrels as their aging vessel. (it is also the first rum that made me take rum seriously thanks to me mentor Jeff Ferris)
See where I am going here?
The flavors of the original bourbon cask imparted next to the rum and finished with a well done Irish whiskey? This, in my spirited married mind, made my eyes turn and see a true, genuine beauty, that before I didn’t believe possible. Yet there she is right thee in my glass. And I embrace the beauty, and she has to offer as she is unyielding and free from restraint. Teeling Small Batch is the spirit if freedom, yet being true to tradition.
And I invite you to join me in a toast to all that is beauty in this world as we embark upon a Thanksgiving Weekend here in the states and pay honor to all we have and all we are and remember what brought us to this moment. we are a blend of beauty. And Teeling Irish Whiskey is at the heart of ll things inclusive good
Go raibh an éirí gréine a thaispeáint ar an gealltanas gach lá agus is féidir leis an luí na gréine a thabhairt dúinn síocháin inár deireadh
SOURCE: The Santa Fe Barman – Read entire story here.