Mixing Spirits. Three Sisters

Mixing Spirits. Three Sisters

Vodka - Gin - Tonic

Our three featured bottles come from neighbouring counties: Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford, the three sisters.

Highbank Orchards Organic Kilkenny Apple Vodka, 40%, €30.50 (35cl)

If you’re used to vodka with little more than 40% abv going for it, you’re going to be surprised by this with its aromas and flavours of the autumnal orchard, an organic one at that.

The base spirit is made from their own apples and the vodka itself “lends a wonderful apple flavor to cocktails”. Use this in cocktails instead of your regular vodka and wait for the accolades.

This is 100% organic, single estate (grown, distilled and bottled at Highbank) and, yes, it is normal strength at 40%. Haven't got to the cocktail stage yet - waiting for a recipe specific to the product! - but I certainly enjoyed mixing it with Poacher’s Tonic, an excellent new Irish product.

The Highbank vodka comes in two sizes: 35cl at €30.50 and 50cl at €55.00.

Blackwater No. 5 Small Batch Irish Gin, 41.5%, €30.00 (50cl) Bradley’s

In quite a short time, Peter Mulryan Blackwater Gin No. 5 has become one of the most popular of the small batch gins now available in ireland. This London Dry Gin is not the only one that Blackwater produce and their latest, a strawberry one, was launched at the recent Wexford Food Festival.

Twelve botanicals are used in the process, including Coriander which goes “citrus-y” in the mix. Considering that citrus (dried skins) and bitter orange (also dried skins) are also used you could see why he advised against using a lemon in your gin. Lime would be a better choice. Juniper (the oil is extracted and used) is perhaps the best known element, having been traditionally used to make gin, and indeed provides the dominant flavour.

The No. 5 quickly gained loyal fans and Peter, from Conna in East Cork, was on his way. The gin is crisp and elegant with great flavour. They say “ it’s year round summer in a glass” and “liquid sunshine for the soul”. Add in quinine (via your tonic) and you have a most pleasant way of taking your medicine. Well the G & T was one method the British used to counter malaria!

Poacher’s Premium Irish Tonic Water, 20cl, Bradley’s

Now that we’ve highlighted two brilliant Irish spirits (from two producers who have even more on their lists), we’d better guide you in the direction of a good tonic. And just in time, comes this excellent Poacher’s from County Wexford. It is based on a “rich spring water: that has “been pilfered and poached since 1825”.

Taste it on its own and you'll immediately see the concentrated quality. Put it up against a 39 cent can, Freeway Indian Tonic Water from Lidl, and you’ll know why you will pay more for Poacher’s which is in a different class entirely.

Mixing cheaper tonic with premium products is a waste of time, a waste of good Irish gin and vodka and a waste of money. I mixed myself two gins, one of each. As an amateur it took me a while to spot the difference but you certainly notice it on the finish. With Poacher's, the finish (when you swallow) lingers and lingers but the other one kills it there and then. The longer the flavour lasts is a sign of quality in both food and drink. Much longer, much better with Poacher’s. Go for it!

The full list of ingredients for Poacher’s is: Carbonated irish spring water, sugar beets, Irish rosemary, Florida orange, natural flavours and natural quinine.

The full list of ingredients for Freeway is: Carbonated water, sugar. Acid: Citric Acid; Natural Flavouring, Flavouring (Quinine).

Time to Check the Wine & Drinks Events at #Litfest16

Wine & Drinks Events in the Drinks Theatre at #Litfest16

at the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food & Wine   

Saturday 21st May and Sunday 22nd May 2016

Jancis is sold out!

Saturday 21st May 2016 wine & drinks events, Drinks Theatre at Litfest16

Irish Craft Cider

Saturday 21st May, 9.30am – 10.30am, Drinks Theatre, talk and tasting €16

Panel talk & Irish Craft Cider tasting with the producers and drinks writers including Pete Brown, co-author of ‘The World’s Best Ciders’ http://litfest.ie/events/irish-craft-cider-0

Hugh Johnson in conversation with John Wilson

Saturday 21st May, 11.30am – 12.30pm, Drinks Theatre €25

Hugh Johnson OBE, the world’s most successful wine author, and a recipient of the French National Order of Merit, has written a series of landmark books on wine during the past five decades. His annual Pocket Wine Book has sold more than 12 million copies in a dozen languages since its first edition in 1977. http://litfest.ie/events/hugh-johnson-conversation-john-wilson

‘Monastrell, Mourvèdre and Mataro – three grapes in one’

Saturday 21st May, 1.00pm – 2.00pm, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting €16

Join the Irish Examiner wine writer, Leslie Williams as he explores this overlooked and intriguing grape variety with a wine tasting by way of illustration with a selection from Spain, France and Australia. http://litfest.ie/events/monastrell-mourv%C3%A8dre-and-mataro-three-grapes-one

The World’s Under-priced Wines with Jancis Robinson MW

Saturday 21st May, 3.00pm – 4.00pm, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting (sold out)

Described by Decanter magazine as 'the most respected wine critic and journalist in the world', Jancis Robinson MW is editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine, wine columnist with The Financial Times and has written and co-authored many books including The World Atlas of Wine and Wine Grapes, each of these books recognised as a standard reference worldwide.  http://litfest.ie/events/worlds-under-priced-wines-jancis-robinson-mw

Irish Whiskey and The Role of Wood

Saturday 21st May, 5.00pm – 6.00pm, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting €16

With Kevin O’Gorman, Master of Maturation, Midleton Distillery, and drinks writer Dave Broom, author of more than a dozen books, including The World Atlas of Whiskey, and recipient of Drinks Writer of the Year, and IWSC Communicator of the Year

http://litfest.ie/events/irish-whiskey-and-role-wood-kevin-ogorman-master-maturation-midleton-distillery

Cooperage with Master Cooper Ger Buckley

Saturday 21st May 6.00pm – 7.30pm, talk & cooperage demo €16 (free ticketed event)

Midleton Distillery Master Cooper Ger Buckley learned his trade directly from his father. His family have been making barrels for over 200 years and Ger himself is a 5th generation cooper, an ancient craft and skill, dating back thousands of years

http://litfest.ie/events/cooperage-master-cooper-ger-buckley

"Tales of Ales"

Saturday 21st May, 8.30pm – 9.30pm, Drinks Theatre, Theatre & tasting €16

This is an enlightening tasting event fusing history, storytelling and craft beer tasting with Beer Sommelier and writer Judith Boyle and her sister, writer, performer & drinks consultant, Susan Boyle, both of Two Sisters Brewing. http://litfest.ie/events/tales-ales

Sunday 22nd May events in the Drinks Theatre at Litfest16

Fermented Drinks

Kefir, Kombucha, and Kraut shots…

Sunday 22nd May, 9.30am – 10.30am, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting (free ticketed event)

Fermented Drinks' panel talk & tasting of fermented non-alcoholic drinks including Kefir and Kombucha with John Wilson, wine & drinks writer, The Irish Times and Virginia O'Gara of My Goodness

http://www.litfest.ie/events/fermented-drinks

“Hops and Glory” – IPA Craft Beer with Pete Brown and Caroline Hennessy

Sunday 22nd May 11.30am – 12.30pm, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting €16

Pete Brown, member of the British Guild of Beer Writers, and Beer Writer of the Year, will be talking and tasting IPA Craft Beer in Hops & Glory with Caroline Hennessy co-author of Sláinte, the book on Irish craft beer. http://litfest.ie/events/hops-glory

‘Islands in the Sun’ – Unique wines from Europe’s ancient island vineyards

with John Wilson, Irish Times wine & drinks writer

Sunday 22nd May 1.00pm – 2.00pm, Drinks Theatre, talk & tasting €16

There is a fantastic history of wine making on many of the various islands in the Mediterranean going back to ancient times, from Italy, Greece, France, Spain, Croatia and elsewhere, including the Canaries and Madeira with some amazing stories behind them. This wine talk & tasting will also look at the various ancient traditions of viticulture and vinification on these islands, many of which are now attracting renewed interest. http://litfest.ie/events/islands-sun

Gin with Dave Broom, Peter Mulryan and Nick Strangeway

Sunday 22nd May, 2.30pm – 3.30pm, Drinks Theatre, talk and tasting €16

Dave Broom, prolific spirits writer, is also author of the recently published Gin – the Manual, will be joined by author and Irish craft gin distiller Peter Mulryan of Blackwater Gin and international drinks guru Nick Strangeway http://litfest.ie/events/gin-0

Cocktails, with ingredients foraged from the Big Shed with Nick Strangeway and Oisin Davis

Sunday 22nd May, 4.30pm – 5.50pm, Drinks Theatre, demo & tasting €16

One of Ireland’s best-known names in the world of cocktails, Oisín Davis, together with Nick Strangeway, World Mixologist of the Year will present a cocktail demo and tasting with ingredients ‘foraged’ from the Big Shed. http://litfest.ie/events/cocktails-ingredients-foraged-big-shed

Please see the Litfest brochure for box office details and online at www.litfest.ie

or contact Colm@ballymaloe.ie for any additional information on the Litfest Drinks Theatre wine & drinks events .

Thanks to Colm McCan for the update.

You Can't Hurry Sloe Gin. St Patrick’s Distillery

You Can't Hurry Sloe Gin

St Patrick’s Distillery

You can’t hurry Sloe Gin. That’s what Cyril Walsh and Barry Fitzgerald of Cork's St Patrick’s Distillery told me last week.  The sloes and the gin do their thing together for about three months. No sugar is added. They like to retain the natural tartness of the sloes, though they temper it with “just a drop of honey”.

Another infusion is their Elderflower Gin, the process here taking about a month. Both infusions are post distillation and are done with the gin at 96.4% to make “the extraction more complete” and it is “cut” after that.

The Sloe and Honey is Cyril’s favourite and he loves it with ginger ale. Barry goes for the Classic and takes it as a G & T. The other gin - they make four - is the Extra Dry. All, by the way, are the full 40% abv.

And when Barry, or his colleagues, makes that G & T, the tonic will be the German made 28 Drinks. It is a low sugar mixer, comes in a can and comes highly recommended by the Douglas Distillery team.

Cyril (left) and Barry

The gins and their St Patrick's Vodka are made with potato alcohol, are charcoal filtered and hand bottled. The alcohol is “a full strength spirit, straight and crystal clear, with an aroma and taste profile that is unique”. By the way, each bottle of vodka takes about 250 potatoes!

The whiskey is bought in at present but that will change over the next few years. The bought in whiskey, already quite a good product having been matured for more than three years in first fill bourbon barrels, is blended with a 21 year old malt whiskey. Cyril says the blend of the young and the very old (very expensive too!), plus the fact that it has been raised in US oak, produces the perfect balance, and make it extra special.

Indeed, the whiskey has been the stand-out success so far. “We are up against the big boys, up against Jameson, so we can’t go to the market with the same type of whiskey. We can't be the same and we don't want to be the same. People have been very willing to try the whiskey and are impressed by its smoothness and that longer finish”. Barry has been impressed with the way the Sloe and Honey Gin has been received, "Maybe because of the long tradition in Ireland of making Sloe gin at home”.

St Patrick's may be new but not all their kit is!
This old Vitamin Stamper, from the 1950s, was
 spotted in the UK and adapted by Cyril to
cork their bottles of spirits.

The team travels to exhibitions all over the country. Check out their products and be sure to sample their cocktails. Indeed, you’ll find some cocktail recipes, including the Crafty Cobbler, on their site here.

If you can't hurry Sloe Gin, you can't hurry a distillery either. Tom Keightley (Managing Director) and Cyril (General Manager) are the pioneers of St Patrick’s and Barry has joined them as Brand Manager. They are just about six months in operation. The Potato alcohol is being bought in at present but they have their own stills now and expect them to be operational in the near future.

They do their own bottling here in Douglas, by hand. Soon, they be contracting out that part of the operation, mainly because of increasing volumes of sales. Aside from the general market, the products are selling well in Dublin and Cork Airports.

St Patrick’s won't be stopping at the airports. They have confirmed their first export order and that goes off to Germany next October and, as a follow-up, the team will attend the ProWein, the International Trade Fair for Wine and Spirits next March. Could well be a Happy St Patrick’s Day for the Cork company.

St Patrick’s Distillery

Unit 105

St Patrick’s Woolen Mills,

Couglas

Cork.

Tel: 021 4918791

Facebook: St Patrick’s Distillery https://www.facebook.com/stpatricksdistillery.ie?fref=ts

Twitter: @StDistillery

You might have spotted this at St Patrick's tastings, the
most recent at the weekend in the RDS. A piece of a
whiskey barrel is heated, the glass is filled with smoke,
and you add in your whiskey for a drink with a difference!

Bombay Sapphire EAST. More Please.

Bombay Sapphire EAST

Some of the botanicals used by Bombay Sapphire, clockwise from
top left: Liquorice, Orris, Cassia bark, Angelica

Bombay Sapphire East, 42%, widely available at about €35.00

Okay. First that EAST bit. Two additional botanicals (from the east!) are at play here, additional to those in the regular Bombay Sapphire that is. These are the fragrant yet crisp Lemongrass which comes from Thailand while a subtle bite is provided by the Vietnamese Black peppercorns.

I've long had a grá for the original UK made Bombay Sapphire, at least for as long as I’ve been travelling to France with Brittany Ferries (made my first trip in 1980 from Tivoli). The Pont Aven, their ferry out of Cork, has an onboard display (above) of the botanicals used and they include: Juniper Berries, Grains of Paradise, Lemon Peel, Cubeb Berries, Coriander seeds, Cassia bark, Angelica root, Almonds, Orris root, and Liquorice.

Light, with a bite, is the first impression of the EAST and it makes a superb G & T. Of course, the original is regarded as light and floral but the EAST is that bit different and a terrific alternative as the quality is just as good. The difference seems to be a softer hit of the essential juniper, the earthy hit of the pepper and the citrusy notes of the lemongrass combining to make it even easier to drink than its older sibling. The EAST too has an intense, the spice at play here too, lingering finish.

If my Christmas present buyer reads this, I’d like a box of the EAST please, though I wouldn't be at all disappointed with a mixed case! Even a bottle!

If you like a spicy gin, here's another one, available at
Bradley's, North Main Street, Cork, bringing
the total number of gins available here to 40.

St Patrick's Distillery Launch

St Patrick's Distillery Launch

At Coughlan's (l to r): Andrew Desmond (Whazon), Cyril Walsh and
Barry Fitzgerald (both St Patrick's)

The team at St Patrick's Distillery in Douglas could hardly have picked a better venue for their recent launch than Coughlan's Bar in Douglas Street and will be hoping that some of the pub's longevity will rub off on their new venture. Coughlan's is close to 200 years old, a very lively 200 years as it is a recent winner of the IMRO Music Venue of the Year Award. Check it out here.

Lovely, lively old pub in Douglas Street

The St Patrick's Range.
It includes four gins including an Elderflower and also a Sloe and Honey. Indeed that Sloe and Honey featured in the most popular cocktail of the evening, the Sloe Heaven!

Re-GIN-eration. Renaissance of the Garden Spirit

Re-GIN-eration

Renaissance of the Garden Spirit

Gin’s popularity is on the increase. And, from being the drink for parents and grandparents, it has found a younger audience.

What are the reasons for the increase in popularity? I asked Michael Creedon of Bradley’s in North Main Street (who have 35 gins in stock and are still expanding the range). His list:

1. Somewhat like the craft beer explosion, when people spend their hard earned money now, they like to get a return in quality, flavour and taste experience – bang for your buck if you will, with quality taking precedence over price/quantity.
2. The emergence of smaller, craft Irish distilleries has increased the overall interest in gin.
3. The great diversity in flavour between gins. If you taste 20 different gins, you will quite literally experience 20 different taste sensations.

It is, of course, a very versatile drink available in a variety of interesting flavours and a

bartender can do a million things with it. Cocktails by the score for example.

Gin is also a spirit that lets small-scale distillers get creative.They have the ability to use different botanicals. All this leads to much greater variation than you'd get with vodka.

No shortage of creativity among the new Irish distillers. Most people will know about the botanicals that go into gin, including the essential juniper. The Saint Patrick’s gin is based on alcohol derived from potatoes while Highbank’s comes from the apples in their organic orchards and they use botanicals from their farm. Blackwater have matured gin in Juniper casks.

There is a massive amount of potential and some really interesting products are now on the market as the rise in the number of new producers in the UK is being replicated here. And not just here and in the UK; Germany, USA and Australia have also reported a big rise over the past two or three years.

Good to see the new Irish producers involved. Michael argues that the new producers “need to stand out from the crowd with smart packaging and innovative use of various botanicals and flavours. For example, St. Patrick's Distillery have an Elderflower Gin in their range.”

What are the Irish gins? Michael: “Apart from CDC from Irish Distillers, the new wave of small, Irish craft gin producers are led by Dingle Distillery, Blackwater Distillery, Highbank Orchard, Shortcross Distillery and Cork's own St. Patrick's Distillery based in Douglas. Bradley's also carry gins from England, Scotland, Spain, Germany and Norway.” Two Trees, from the West Cork Distillery in Skibbereen, is not in Bradley's. Not yet!

But is all the new gin up to standard? Sometimes, in a new distillery there is more interest in the whiskey. But while waiting the required three years and a day for the whiskey to mature, they use gin as a revenue earner. Do you they rush it out or do they give the gin enough attention so that it can be a long term proposition for them?

Michael Creedon thinks the producers take their gin seriously: “While some gin producers also have the ultimate goal of producing whiskey, this does not have an adverse effect on the quality of the gin. On the contrary, to ensure they maintain a good reputation they put everything into the quality of their gin."

Desmond Payne, the Master Gin Distiller at Beefeaters, says gin and tonic is a marriage that works but there are many more ways to mix. “At present, there is a revival in cocktails, some fantastic ones nowadays. Gin is right back in fashion. Some gin bars in Spain have up to 300 brands (and 50 tonics) on offer and new distilleries are popping up everywhere. There are new gins coming out sometimes that try too hard. You can't change everything at once!”

There is a huge variation in the price per bottle. Does that always reflect quality? Michael: “Higher price does not always mean a better gin as limited supply and difficulty of sourcing will also affect price, however every gin will have its own flavour profile, so it's definitely worth experimenting!”

What are the more popular gins in Bradley’s?

Irish - Dingle, Blackwater and St. Patricks.

International Gins under €40 - Plymouth, Beefeater 24, Bombay Sapphire.

International Gins over €40 – Hendricks, The Botanist, Bathtub Gin.

With all the new and old gins on the market, packaging is more important than ever?

Michael: “Gin, in general as a category, comes in particularly smart packaging and this is something very important for new producers to keep in mind. Consumers buy with their eyes firstly but come back for the quality and taste of course!”

As Desmond Payne said at Ballymaloe LitFest, gin and tonic is a marriage made in heaven. But which tonic goes with which gin? What are the most popular tonics sold in Bradley’s?

Michael: “The quality of the tonic you use, it being the most popular mixer for gin, has become very important to consumers. Schweppes is still the traditional tonic used in Ireland but we have an ever increasing demand for tonics such as Fever Tree, 1724 and our most popular variety, Fentiman's.

Fentiman's is most popular, we believe, because it offers 3 varieties in the range – standard, light or herbal tonic water. Experimentation is all part of the fun to see which one you like yourself.

We have also recently added a tonic syrup to our range. The usual mix is one part syrup, 2 parts gin and 3 parts soda/sparkling water. However, these quantities can be played with to get the perfect mix for you! We currently carry Bradley's Tonic Syrup from American but have just recently discovered a tonic syrup produced here in Galway. We are very excited about this and will be adding it to our range very shortly!”

See also

Gin, with Desmond Payne at Ballymaloe LitFest