History

The Irish are credited with the invention of whiskey, when, back in the 5th century, missionaries from the middle east brought the art of distillation to the monks in Ireland. The Irish originally had over 2,000 distilleries but because of the popularity of Scotch there are now only five. Probably the main reason for the downscaling of production was due to the invention of the continuous still. The Scots realised it would benefit the industry by making it possible to greatly increase production without undermining quality but the Irish disagreed and continued to produce their whiskey the old fashioned way and were quickly overtaken by the Scots. Another reason was the advent of prohibition in the USA, up until the 1920’s the USA was the largest export market for Irish whiskey and when prohibition was enforced its major market was lost over night.

Production

Irish whiskey is produced using grain, malted barley and un-malted barley and unlike scotch the cereal is dried without peat. The whiskies contain a higher percentage of un-malted barley than malt or grain and the un-malted barley is always triple distilled in pot stills to give a lighter flavour. Irish whiskey is a minimum of 3 years old  (In Ireland) although most are matured for at least five to ten years. The main areas of production are, Cork, County Antrim and Tullamore.