“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” – William Butler Yeats
So just now, before supper (‘supper’ a good old fashion word for the evening meal which I prefer
over ‘Dinner’) I poured about two fingers of Slieve Foy - the best Irish
Single Malt Whiskey (with an 'e', eh?)
that I have ever imbibed - and unless I luck out in some back-water liquor
store someday and find a dusty old bottle of the same when I finish this bottle
I'll never taste it again, for:
"Slieve Foy 8 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey is no
more - production has finally ceased. It was terribly sad; almost like the
passing of a dear friend.
But what prompted
the demise of this whiskey? Money. Beam Global, owners of Jim Beam and many
other spirit brands, decided that they would really like a slice of the
burgeoning Irish whiskey market, which has seen tremendous growth over the past
few years. The only available distillery to buy was the small, independent
Cooley distillery. Beam bought the distillery in late 2011, and with it went
independent distilling in Ireland. Up to that point, John Teeling, Cooley’s
founder, had bought the rights to and resurrected many of the long-forgotten
whiskey brands, much to the delight of whiskey fans at home and abroad many old
brands had started to pop up again, like one best-selling value brand of the
last few years - Merry’s Irish whiskey?
However, it
didn’t make financial or marketing sense for Beam to produce many smaller
brands. No, what they needed was a flagship whiskey which could compete on a
global scale with Jameson. Kilbeggan, the blend named after the Old Kilbeggan
Distillery in the heart of Ireland, was chosen to serve as Jameson’s arch
rival. It takes a lot of marketing money to pit oneself against the best-known
whiskey in Ireland, but it also takes an ocean of whiskey. The production
volume needed to meet the demand of this brand over the next few years meant
that there would be casualties: Michael Collins, Merry’s, Clontarf, Slane
Castle, Millar’s and Slieve Foy, to name just a few. Simply put, Beam needs
every drop of whisky it can get its hands on to supply the Kilbeggan
brand."
Re <http://eatdrinkevolve.com/slieve-foy-irish-whiskey-of-the-year-is-dead/>
These unique private whiskeys like Slieve Foy (Foy's
Mountain) sometimes, and definitely in this case, so excel in taste and
enjoyment that I almost cry at the shame of its' demise. So I slowly,
painstakingly sip this superior brew, teasing out the flavour and the ambiance
of that “Romantic Ireland’ – with O’Leary in the grave”.
and just a foot note on the said Kilbeggan – a year or two
ago I bought a bottle of Kilbeggan Irish Whiskey, 40% ABV – ‘our finest blend from
the worlds oldest distillery’. I was
under-impressed – this was not a single malt or even a blended malt it seemed. I tried it and didn’t have to spit it out but
it did set untouched until my son and some friends stopped by and the bottle
dropped to a little over half full and there it has set these many months. To be fair I will try it again soon and
perhaps as with some Scotch single malts that left me cold at first drink,
later captured my attention as my taste matured. But at this present moment its’ prime purpose
is to take up space in my little whisky corner.
For a fair review
which ends by saying that Kilbeggan is not a ‘sipping’ whiskey but more for a ‘mixed’
drink whiskey see:
The other theme of this post is how much I hate big corporations whose only goal - all of them - is to make money with as cheap a product as possible and to destroy the little gems of businesses that have been peacefully making a good living with a good product and making the working man - and also many an astute wealthy man - happy.
Mark's and spencer is selling slieve foy irish whisky
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