Following the Irish Whiskey Trail
All photos by Keith Allison.
When a whiskey drinker finds oneself in Ireland, one tends to plan one's road trip around the location of Ireland's whiskey distilleries. There aren't many; almost a century after American Prohibition, the industry is only just beginning to recover something of its former glory. Jameson, Tullamore DEW, Kilbeggan, and Teeling. Cooley, now part of Beam-Suntory and home to many of the most innovative Irish whiskeys, isn't open to the public. Dingle Distillery, way out on the dramatic and picturesque Dingle peninsula, is theoretically making whiskey, but right now their main product is gin. If you want to stretch the definition of Irish Whiskey Trail and get some people mad at you, you can add Bushmills to the list, even though technically it's in Northern Ireland -- a national divide which is, to the motorist, apparent only in the fact that all of a sudden the road signs are in miles rather than kilometers and there's a lot less Gaelic on them.
That's not a lot of distilleries for an industry with such a high profile. On the other hand, the small number makes it relatively easy to hit them all during a reasonably long trip. We had two weeks, which was more than enough time to fit them in. In doing that, we learned something: none of the major whiskey distilleries actually let you see their distilleries, except maybe off at a distance. In the whole of Ireland, Teeling in Dublin is the only full-fledged tour of a working whiskey distillery in Ireland. They've been in operation since June of 2015 and were built with tourism in mind. It's not that the others are hiding anything. It's just that when the industry fell apart, most everyone who made whiskey in Ireland consolidated into a few massive, industrial facilities. When the new whiskey boom began in the 2000s and whiskey tourism started in earnest, it didn't occur to Irish whiskey makers that anyone would want to see such unsightly places. Even if they did, there was no feasible way to make these behemoth distilleries safe for tourists.
So the major names in Irish whiskey did the next best thing and opened museums and visitors' centers, assuming -- not incorrectly -- that the vast majority of tippling tourists would be happy as long as the show was good and ended with a whiskey tasting. And so that is the lay of the land as of today. Jameson has two Jameson Experience centers, one in Dublin (where they used to make Jameson) and one to the south in Midleton (near where they currently make Jameson and many of the other best-known Irish whiskeys). Tullamore DEW has a visitors' center in the town of Tullamore. In each case, the tours are similar. A guide -- in every case a witty, knowledgeable person who keeps the crowds entertained -- leads you through a series of displays and distilling mock-ups, some of them interactive, that spin the history and explain the process of making Irish whiskey. Even someone with a lot of these tours under their belt can still find them engaging and educational. There's always something new to learn. Each tour ends with a curated tasting through the distillery's current line-up. So you might not get to see the whiskey being made, but at least you get to sip it.
At the old Kilbeggan distillery, just a few minutes' drive from Tullamore DEW visitors' center, things are a little different. There, you get to tour the actual distillery; it's just that they haven't made whiskey there in a long time. Instead, the entire facility is the museum, a sort of stabilized not-quite ruin that lets you get a feel for how things would have been before there was much in the way of modernization or computerization (or safety standards). This tour is self-guided and, for the whiskey history nerd, a must-do. And one discovers near the end of the tour that at least one small corner of old Kilbeggan has been renovated and is distilling again, albeit it in small quantities. Perhaps best of all for the person behind the wheel on a whiskey road trip, you can get your complimentary tasting to go, so you can enjoy it later, when you don't have to drive.
The Dingle Distillery is the most remote, but don't let the long drive keep you away. They've been distilling since 2012 and expect to release their first whiskey later this year, for the year of the centennial celebration of Irish independence. Dingle itself is a fantastic, old-school coastal town with gorgeous buildings, dramatic vistas as you drive in, spectacular food, and a dizzying concentration of exceptional pubs, including a few that double as hardware stores. While the distillery might not make much in the way of whiskey, it does sit on a beautiful stretch of land, and Dingle itself offers plenty of attractions, including a brewery and, for the whiskey searcher, Dick Mack's Pub, a no-nonsense sort of that, despite its humble appearances, has a whiskey selection the measure of any bar in the country. I mean, there's a reason it's where Robert Mitchum drank when he was in town.
If you make the drive to Northern Ireland -- and why wouldn't you (there's no border crossing, but be sure to have some British pounds handy) -- you can tour the island's only really large-scale distilling operation. Bushmills, for as big as it is and as much as they produce, is an oddly picturesque distillery in a gorgeous little town just a stone's throw from the northern coast and an easy drive from Belfast or whatever Game of Thrones location you've been touring. Here you get a look at Irish whiskey making on a large scale, but even then it's an intimate and cordial experience. And, of course, it ends in the tasting room (which also has some food service).Ireland has a way to go before its whiskey tourism industry catches up with the US and Scotland, but even if you're not seeing much of the stuff get made, the visitors centers are well-mounted and carefully maintained. It's also a chance to sample some expressions of well-known brands that don't make it to the United States. And hey! They even have an app!