The Jameson Experience
The Irish have a reputation of being pretty heavy drinkers (think the old priest in Father Ted.) Well, now that I'm here I can see why, since not only is Guinness made here but so many fine whiskeys are produced here as well. In Dublin you'll find one of the most important of them, John Jameson and Son, which is where we headed one fine afternoon. This tourist mecca on Bow Street is so well organized and professional. We checked in at the ticketing area, got our prebooked tickets and coins for our welcome drink, and headed upstairs to wait for our tour.
The waiting is enjoyable, of course, because you trade your coins in for a beverage at the Grog bar: your choice of Jameson's straight up or on the rocks, a Jameson's and ginger ale, or a lemonade.
After a short wait, our guide, Jessie, took us into a miniature theatre in the round with a big round table in the center which served as a projection screen. Jessie delivered the story of Jameson, perfectly choreographed to the projection. Kudos to the scriptwriters for making the history of a whiskey company both interesting and dramatic. And who'd have thought that prohibition in the US would have had such a huge effect upon the makers of Irish whiskey? Their reputation was tainted by the bootleggers who poured tar and other unsavory things into their liquor to make it look and smell more like whiskey. When prohibition ended, the lingering smell and taste of the conterfeit stuff was so repellent that no one wanted the real thing. Jameson and a couple other companies pooled their resources and were able to weather the storm of that economic downturn.
Next we were off to a room where we learned about the process of making whiskey and the components involved. We sniffed an array of things associated with the distillation and maturing processes and, armed with that information, headed to the tasting room. We tasted three different whiskies, a Jameson classic, Jameson Black Barrel, and a Distillery Edition. .
I came away thinking that I liked the Distillery Edition best but that was before we did the barrel tasting. We were ushered into a dark, sweet-smelling room that must look like heaven to true whiskey aficionados. The deconstructed barrel even looked like angel wings,
Our guide dipped a narrow copper tube, called a whiskey thief, into the barrel and filled our glasses with about an ounce of the golden liquid.
This is where I learned that I really liked pot still whiskey. It doesn't have that harsh, angular alcohol taste that blended whiskies have. So smooth, so lovely, so much more expensive...
Because they're all about a good experience, we weren't rushed to finish our sample, but we were ushered out, glasses in hand, to make room for the next group. We sat in the bar area where lots of the visitors were sampling cocktails made from Jameson's. If I weren't such a lightweight I would like to have tried some, but we'd already sampled so much that I thought I'd better refrain or I'd never make it home. I walked around the facility a bit and saw a bit of cat and mouse,
the Jameson crest featuring their motto Sine Metu (without fear),
and some of the timber truss work from when Jameson was still made on the Bow Street premises. The trusses supported bags of grain which were poured from above into the mash tuns.
Extra credit to the decorators for use of the empty bottles.
We headed back home but made one more stop along the way at the Old Royal Oak pub.
I was looking forward to listening to some traditional Irish music and it was there, but nobody paid any attention and everyone talked through it. You can hear in this video that the talk almost drowned out the band.
I'd have thought that the band would at least get free drinks, but some band member got up after every song or two and bought a round for the band. Ah, the life of a musician.
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