Think you know Irish whiskey? Diverse styles and new distilleries are defying the stereotypes

Ireland’s southern “second city” of Cork has many things going for it, including an easy walkability, a perhaps surprisingly impressive culinary scene and more than a brewery or two of note. For anyone with an interest in Irish whiskey, however, without question its top attraction is the Shelbourne Bar.

Located in the Victorian Quarter on the north side of the River Lee, the Shelbourne began life as a whiskey bar in 2013 and a mere five years later boasted a menu of 280 Irish whiskeys, a selection that has since almost doubled to 538. For Irish whiskey drinkers in Canada, accustomed to a relatively modest selection of spirits from the Midleton/Jameson distillery in the south and Bushmills in the north, plus a handful of outliers like Writers’ Tears, The Busker and Glendalough, the Shelbourne list is nothing less than revelatory.

While the exact count of Irish distilleries varies, there are easily more than 50 in operation today, with more in development and still others aging and finishing sourced whiskeys. And although the fates have not always been kind to newer operators—the Waterford Distillery, brainchild of industry vet Mark Reynier, entered administration in late 2024—successes have by far outweighed the failures.

Further, those successes have occurred virtually all across the island, from Clonakilty in the south to the Northern Ireland farm distillery, An Carn, nestled at the foot of Carntogher Mountain.

Not just light and sweet

Encouraging this rapid growth is not just a keen interest in and awareness of the whiskey itself, spurred in no small part by the global success of Jameson, but also a dramatic expansion of what defines the Irish category. From the old stereotype of triple distilled, always unpeated and usually light and sweet, Irish whiskey has expanded into a multitude of variations on the theme.

Single pot still is unquestionably the best known of these, it being whiskey distilled in a pot rather than a column still and crafted from a mix of malted and unmalted barley. As a type, it is likely best exemplified by Redbreast from Midleton, but it is now also produced under any number of labels, from such familiar names as Teeling and Green Spot to more hard-to-find gems such as Drumshanbo, Boann and Dingle.

More recent is the emergence of Irish single malt, pioneered in the 1990s by the Cooley Distillery in Dundalk, near the Northern Ireland border. Recognizing that there was likely a market for whiskeys beyond those of the “Big Two,” John Teeling transformed an industrial alcohol plant into a catalyst for change in the national whiskey market, launching not just such single malts as Tyrconnell, but also peated whiskey in the form of Connemara. Since 2013, the company has been owned by Suntory Global, formerly Beam Suntory.

While peated whiskeys are still considered outside the Irish norm—although some labels have embraced the smoke to their abiding benefit, including the Legendary Silkie and Hinch Peated Small Batch—single malt Irish whiskeys have over the past decade or two grown almost commonplace. In addition to such small production malts as The Irishman Legacy, West Cork Virgin Oak and Knappogue Castle 12 year old, the category is experiencing the arrival of ultra-aged expressions, including Dunville’s 20-year-old Oloroso Sherry Cask from the Echlinville Distillery and 21-, 25- and 30-year-old releases from the venerable Bushmills distillery.

And finally, like the Scots before them, Irish distillers have in recent years fully embraced the notion of cask finishes. While these are perhaps most famously seen in the extensive Jameson lineup, which includes the beer-themed Caskmates series, both conventional and unusual finishes may be found across the land, from oloroso sherry cask finish of up-and-comer Glendalough Double Barrel to the tequila cask and icewine cask finishes of Writers’ Tears.

Taken together, these new distilleries and diverse approaches add up to a brand new, multi-faceted look for Irish whiskey, and a vast and most welcome expansion of the flavour profiles available therein.

—by Stephen Beaumont