![]() In Power’s Words: Powers Three Swallow Irish Whiskey Powers Three Swallow Irish Whiskey Review: Details and Tasting Notes If you’re interested in learning about the history of Irish Pot Still whiskey I highly recommend checking out Pot Still Irish: Our Stolen Heritage Part 1 and Part 2 from Blackwater Distillery. However, like most things, the details of the story are far more complicated than the highlights. This FU to the government turned into a unique style of whiskey that defined an island and is what we’re going to be reviewing today. Not ones to sit on their hands about these things, the Irish distillers simply reduced the amount of malted barley they used and started using unmalted barley in their whiskey mashes. ![]() This affected several industries in Ireland, but it most affected the whiskey and beer industries with whiskey leading the way. Many decades ago, there was a tax put on malted barley. This style of whiskey is unique to Ireland and came about due to taxes. Being a single pot still style (formerly pure pot still) they employ the use of both malted and unmalted barley and distilled in a copper pot still, never a column still. “It’s fairly nuanced.Powers Three Swallow Irish Whiskey is a triple distilled single pot still Irish Whiskey. But Ryan ends our conversation with a better description, which better places the new Powers bottle firmly in the world of Irish whiskey. “And it maintains the mouthfeel of Irish whiskey.” (And it’s only $32, which is an outstanding price for something that works well neat, on the rocks and in a wide variety of cocktails.) Overall, it’s an incredibly balanced yet surprisingly not-that-spicy rye it has a sweetness and earthiness on the nose, while you’ll find a complexity on the palate, with notes of cinnamon, cloves, fruit, orange peel, vanilla, toffee, butterscotch, banana and cherry.Įven with the differences in grain and distilling, “I find some of those notes here in other Powers whiskeys,” says Ryan. Powers Irish Rye is triple distilled and non-chill filtered, coming in at 43.2% ABV. It also goes through a unique maturation process, with the distillery utilizing four different types of American oak (virgin oak, first-fill bourbon and refills) for just under five years, another differentiation from the larger Powers portfolio.īut the result surprisingly fits in with everything Powers has been doing for two-plus centuries. “And that extended fermentation gets you more fruity esters.” “That’s an easier way to target a specific flavor,” says Ryan. To create the new expression, Powers doubled the fermentation time and put the liquid through a column still, in lieu of the traditional pot still that Powers is known for. ![]() Still, Powers Irish Rye represents a departure for the brand, as well as the larger Irish whiskey category. But our archivist found there was a sprinkling of rye and wheat back in the 1800s.” “What we use at Powers is just malted barley and unmalted barley, that’s the pot still recipe. “Historically, you could have rye, wheat, oats or barley in your Irish whiskey mashbill,” he says. And once Ryan and his team started digging through the archives, they noticed that rye had indeed been a part of the company’s 200+ year whiskey journey. ![]() Irish Distillers is now a part of Pernod Ricard. In 1966, when the Irish whiskey industry was in disarray, John Power & Son merged with Jon Jameson & Son and Cork Distilleries Company to create Irish Distillers production soon shifted from Dublin to Midleton. Now, a bit of brand history: Powers originally launched all the way back in 1791. Patrick’s Day drinker (or for any other day) It’s interesting: we can grow any grain we want, but farmers were looking for income, so they started moving toward wheat and barley, so we actually had to commission a farm to grow the rye, over 66 hectares in Wexford.” (In a bit of symmetry, Wexford has some Powers family history Edermine House, the ancestral home of the Powers family, is nearby.) “But it had disappeared almost completely from Ireland. “Back in 2015, we went looking for an Irish farm that would grow rye,” Ryan tells InsideHook over a few Powers Rye Manhattans (recipe below). While rye has been a component of Irish whiskey in the past - and a bit in the present (see: Kilbeggan, Method & Madness) - the grain has usually only made up a small percentage of the whiskey’s mashbill, and the rye itself, at least in the present day, has been imported from other parts of Europe. An odd claim, but that’s how Master Distiller Eric Ryan describes the new Powers Irish Rye, a 100% rye whiskey that’s unique within the modern Irish whiskey world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |