One Final Nod to Ireland for the Month

As March's conclusion nears, I wanted to share a concoction recipe that has pleasantly surprised my much-better-half and I this month. Published in a ABC Fine Wine & Spirits promotional email, the libation caught my eye because of its use of cucumber. Though I am not a huge gin or vodka guy, I do very much enjoy a cucumber gimlet and was intrigued to see if cucumber would also work well with Irish whiskey (spoiler alert - it does!).

A few notes from the trenches after making a fair amount of this cocktail: if your cocktail shaker can accommodate the volume, this recipe can easily be doubled which helps cut down on the muddling labor. The strainer found on a typical cocktail shaker is useless for straining the drink after shaking due to the cucumber pulp, so pop the top off and use a fine-mesh strainer instead. This drink as published uses three-quarters of an ounce of simple syrup which is over the edge of sweetness to my tastes. I've reduced to a half-ounce below, however your personal tart/sweet mileage may vary, adjust accordingly. The elderflower liqueur is essential here as it contributes a tremendous flavor to the finished drink.

Ingredients

1/2 inch chunk of cucumber, cut into smaller chunks

1/2 ounce simple syrup

3/4 ounce lemon juice

1/2 ounce St. Germain (elderflower liqueur)

2 ounces Irish Whiskey

Composition

In a cocktail shaker, drop the chunked-up cucumber and simple syrup. Grab a muddler and pound the cucumber into a mushy paste. Add all remaining ingredients, stir and taste. Adjust to your preferences - if too sweet, add more lemon juice, if too tart, add more syrup. Once satisfied, add ice to the shaker, plop the top on and shake mightily. Remove the top of the shaker and strain into your preferred glass using a fine-mesh strainer.

Cheers to March and hello April.

The Prestige - Redbreast 21-Year

Redbreast 21 Year
Classification: Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey
Country: Ireland
Region: County Cork (Midleton: 51.913°N 8.170°W)
Mash Bill: 100% Barley (malted and un-malted barley)
Strength: 46.0% ABV (92.0° Proof)
Color: Unknown (rumored to be natural color)
Filtration: Unknown (rumored to be non-chill filtered)
Maturation: 21 years in unknown proportion of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks
Price: $269.99 ($299 regularly) (Total Wine)

tl;dr summary - a prestigious whiskey destined to be a special occasion sipper. A dazzling display of tropical fruit is without question the hallmark of this offering. An excellent whiskey, but not all is perfect in paradise. The alluring nose, exotic taste, and sufficient finish equate to an experience that when taken as a whole do not, for me, justify its lofty retail price.

Twenty one year old Redbreast was absolutely an aspirational bottle of whiskey for me. A very good piece of advice for whiskey enthusiasts that is sometimes forgotten is to figure out what type and style of whiskey you like before dropping the big bucks on specific bottles. It seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many expensive bottles are purchased for no reason other than FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) or simply succumbing to powerful marketing and/or peer pressures. For me, my long-standing budgetary limit of $120/bottle, derived from the asking price of Highland Park’s 18-year offering, remained in place for well over a decade. Redbreast 21 was the first crack in my spending resolve.

Retailing for $299, but reduced to $269 courtesy of an in-store discount, it was at the time the most expensive bottle of whiskey I’d purchased. This was not an easy purchase for me to make. Indeed, I spent well over a year and half lusting after this bottle, proudly lingering in a locked display case, before committing to purchase. Leading up to the purchase was well over two years of consistent, dare I say dazzled enjoyment of Redbreast’s cask strength 12-year version. When one has such an enjoyable courtship, it is only natural to wonder what euphoria would emanate from a more serious commitment.

It is a funny thing having a spendy bottle of hooch on one’s shelf, at least it was for me. Deeming the moment not special enough, I procrastinated for months on opening my bottle of Redbreast 21. This is of course a fairly odd prospect - why procure a special bottle of whiskey only to have it sit on the shelf for posterity because no suitably proportional moment arises in which to indulge and enjoy. Eventually, I decided the night of my birthday was as good a time as any and so, three-ish months ago, I finally opened my bottle of Redbreast 21.

Tasting notes below collected over the course of four separate pours spaced out over the past three months.

Smell
Oak, red berry, raspberry, strawberry, vanilla, green grass, cream soda. With time, the bourbon influence is stronger than the sherry influence. The ethanol edge is a notch more pronounced than I’d prefer.

Taste
The taste begins with a rush of oak and spice followed by an absolute tidal wave of tropical fruits, specifically mango and papaya and then red grapes and ripe peaches. Towards the tail end of the sip, the mango and papaya remain, but the oak and spice return. The ethanol punch is strong, but never crosses into hot or prickly. The unmalted barley influence is less pronounced than in the 12-year. Be careful with added water, I found this whiskey will indeed take a small amount of water, but is easily washed out. For me, no more than half a teaspoon for a two ounce pour.

Finish
The mango and papaya continue from the taste, but linger in the backseat while the oak and spice are firmly in the driver’s seat. Eventually the oak and spice diminish leaving the tropical fruits and a pleasant tongue prickle from the ethanol. Gentle tannins. I’d classify the finish as medium in length, flirting with long, but never quite achieving the marathon distance I wish it would.

This is the rare instance when comparing two whiskeys side by side in a blind taste-test would not be all that helpful. The massive tropical fruit notes of the 21-year would instantly dissolve the uncertainty as to which was which. Because of this, comparing the 12-year to the 21-year is a bit misleading - these are two related, but vastly different whiskeys. Like comparing the Beatles to the Rolling Stones. Whereas the 21-year’s signature is the tropical fruit, the 12-year focuses on oak, spice, green grass, and stone fruits like plums and apricots. The 12-year to me is far more indicative of an Irish whiskey - the unmalted barley influence in the mash is much more pronounced to me in the 12-year than the 21-year. Further, the 12-year has a vibrancy, a brightness, and a depth of flavor that is every measure of the 21-year old, perhaps even greater, particularly in the finish, though that could be due to the 12-year’s higher bottling proof (cask strength version that is).

Recently, I learned in an interview with Redbreast Master Blender Dave McCabe that the folks at Midleton Distillery actually produce three variations of their single pot still distillate - ‘light’, ‘medium’, and ‘heavy’. Sadly, Mr. McCabe did not disclose much detail as to what differentiates each variation, but did say that while all versions of Redbreast contain the ‘light’ and ‘medium’ distillate, the 21-year consists of all three, and it’s the ‘heavy’ version that helps contribute the tropical fruit notes found in the 21-year.

Without question the mango and papaya I encountered in the 21-year was the most enjoyable aspect of the experience. On the whole though, I am left feeling a bit conflicted by Redbreast 21. This is indeed very good whiskey, unique whiskey, but I do not personally find the experience proportional to the asking price. For me, Redbreast 21’s biggest problem is that I can purchase three bottles of Redbreast 12-year Cask Strength for less cash than a single bottle of the 21. Delving into the metaphysical, I suspect, for me at least, the frugality of the 12-year also serves as subconscious permission to enjoy a pour of whiskey on a whim, devoid of pressure to apply pomp and circumstance. When pouring the heralded, and expensive 21-year, I felt an air of formality and seriousness; a sense that one cannot just casually pour and enjoy such a whiskey - there has to be a greater reason than ‘just because ’. Beyond the psychological hangup, I do keep returning to the same sentiment that I simply enjoy the 12-year a notch more than I enjoy the 21-year. We’ll see if that trend continues as I’m sure to keep that bottle of 21-year tucked away to be revisited from time to time.

Redbreast 15-year - An Unexpected Twist

Where does the time go, here we are in mid-March and this will be the first post of the year. Truth be told, I had intended, and still plan to post one final favorite pour of 2020 to sit alongside Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof, but my creative desire to do so was sapped back in January. For now, I have a lineup of seasonally appropriate posts that seem better suited to this time of year. Doubtlessly you are seeing plenty of Irish Whiskey advertisements right about now as we are in the week of Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of one particular Irish Whiskey - Redbreast’s 12-year Cask Strength, but rather than celebrate a favorite, I am going to lament a Redbreast that fell a bit short for me. 

Redbreast 15-year seemed like a no-brainer - three years older than my beloved 12-year, 46% ABV, and an enticing selection of maturation barrels. Compliments of several interviews with Midleton Distillery staff that I’ve read and listened to, I learned Redbreast 15-year, like it’s 12-year counterpart is matured in first-fill ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, but the 15-year also contains whiskey aged in refill bourbon and sherry casks. If you spend any amount of time reading reviews of Redbreast 15-year, you’ll quickly discover that it is wildly well regarded. Nary a bad review can be found in an ocean of praise which leads me to the plot-twist of this post - my experience has been pretty far from enjoyable.

Below are Redbreast’s official tasting notes for their 15-year bottling:

Nose

Full and rich with a complex yet balanced mix of berry fruits and aromatic oils.

Taste 

Fully round and mellow with the succulence of fleshy fruit combined with spices and toasted wood.

Finish

Long and sophisticated 

Upon opening my bottle for the first time, there was immediate trouble: wafting up from the glass was the unmistakable smell of match heads. Sulfur! There are a handful of sulfur variations one can experience. Anyone who grew up in Florida doubtlessly knows the rotten-egg version of sulfur courtesy of irrigation systems that use well water. There is also a vegetal brussels sprouts/cabbage variant of sulfur, but neither the egg nor cabbage version was present in the Redbreast. For me, the sulfur I was smelling was squarely of the match head kind and it was entirely off putting to me.

Being a freshly opened bottle, I desperately hoped leaving my pour open to the air for an extended period of time would help diffuse the unwanted sulfur influence, but alas no luck. Depressingly, not only did the sulfur influence carry over to the taste from the smell, but it was amplified significantly on the tongue. The sulfur dominated the tasting experience for me, but lurking in the darkest reaches of each sip were hallmark Redbreast attributes - fruit and oak. The problem was the dominance of the sulfur; in a totally unscientific ratio, the sulfur was 75% of the taste leaving the remaining 25% to the fruit and oak.

Adding water did help reduce the sulfur impression, but doing so frustratingly also reduced the vibrancy of the fruit notes. Further exasperating the situation, what normally would be welcomed, a pleasantly long finish, was anything but as the sulfur continued in the mouth long after the sip. Disgruntled, I decided on a drastic measure: transfer ~1/3 of the bottle’s contents to an empty bottle and leave the remaining 2/3’s of the bottle stored away for a few months in the hope that an extended slumber with air would help dissipate the sulfur note.

Revisiting the bottle 21 weeks after initially storing it, the sulfur note is diminished, but not eliminated. While still not overly enjoyable, I do find the whiskey palatable, its sulfur note approaching amicable levels. Recently, while researching Redbreast’s new Small Batch Cask Strength release, I came across a few posts in the whiskey-centric corners of Reddit and YouTube that mentioned some sulfur-influenced batches of Redbreast, particularly in their 14 to 15-year old stock that was bottled in 2019 and 2020. The sources went on to claim that the folks at the Midleton Distillery corrected the issue, though not before some sulfur-influenced batches were bottled and shipped. Full disclosure, these claims are not coming from official sources, so take this as nothing more than Internet scuttlebutt chatter. Speaking personally, the idea that my specific bottle of Redbreast 15-year emanated from an anomalous batch and is not indicative of the profile Redbreast intended is feasible to me. Combined with the ocean of praise I mentioned above - nearly a decade of reviews with none mentioning any sulfur influence, I am comfortable saying that my specific experience was indeed a one-off, an unfortunate mistake.

While it will probably be some time before I take the plunge on another Redbreast 15-year, I am happy to report that a recently purchased bottle of my personal favorite - Redbreast’s 12-year Cask Strength - is totally free of match head sulfur and just as good as I remember; that’s the version I still enthusiastically recommend without hesitation.

In sticking with the 'Redbreast in March' theme, another offering from Midleton is up next.