42 THE NAVIGATOR | FEATURE WHISKEY OR WHISKY. HERE’S WHY EITHER IS FINE… With global interest in Irish whiskey on the boil, movers and shakers in the industry are casting a keen eye on the detailed ‘Technical File’ that governs what is, and isn’t, Irish whisky. And if you’re wondering where that missing ‘e’ is in ‘whiskey’? Well, that’s part of the point. But first, some history. Turn back the clock 200 years, and Ireland was home to the world’s largest whiskey industry. It boasted some of the world’s largest distilleries, and Dublin was a hotbed of distillation that dominated the world of whisky production. Until, almost overnight, it didn’t, as Ireland fell foul of a perfect storm that the industry failed, quite spectacularly, to weather. The first hurdle came from none other than a former Inspector General of Excise in Ireland, a man who was likely already none too popular with Irish distillers. Aeneas Coffey’s Patent Continuous Distilling Apparatus – aka the Coffey Still – transformed the production process by speeding up the pace and volume of distillation. And while Scottish distilleries leapt at the innovation, and cashed in on the demand for blended whisky, distillers in Ireland largely ignored the new technology. To their downfall. And on the heels of this heightened competition from across the Irish Sea, there was a disaster brewing across the Atlantic: Prohibition. With the key US market dried up, Ireland’s Easter uprising denting domestic demand, and the advent of World War I then shutting down European markets, the Irish whiskey industry collapsed. From some 27 distilleries in the 1890s, within decades only six remained. By the 1960s that had dwindled further. “From the 1970s to the late-80s there was only one company running Irish whiskey,” explains John Cashman, Head of Brand and Product Developer at Wicklow-based Powerscourt Distillery. “By then Irish whiskey sales were as little as 400 000 cases worldwide, and the vast majority of that was for domestic consumption. The industry was in a bad place.” A sea change for the Irish whiskey category came in 1987 when Pernod Ricard bought Irish distillers. “Love them or hate them,” says Cashman, “They changed the outlook on Irish whiskey.” That was thanks to a global push behind Jameson’s, with Pernod Ricard codifying the public understanding of Irish whiskey – triple-distillation, sweeter profile, ‘whiskey’ spelled with an ‘e’ – around the characters of its dominant brand.
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