Drink me I'm Irish

On Monday morning I met up with the people from Jameson to try out their Special Reserve line. (I love having a reason to get out of bed in the morning.) Jameson has four masters- a distiller, a scientist, a blender, and the Master of Maturation Brendan Monks who came to San Francisco.

Monks had a funny way of saying that their whiskey doesn't use peat smoke to dry the barley: "They're not contaminated with turf or anything else." Okay, it's contamination, not flavor. Sure.

The Special Reserve line had the 12 and 18 year-old releases available in the US previously, and just added the Gold Reserve bottling (formerly only available at duty-free shops) and the new Rarest Reserve. The Gold Reserve has a touch of virgin white American oak barrels, plus their usual sherry casks from Iberian oak and used Wild Turkey bourbon barrels, and the Rarest Reserve has some used port barrels in the mix.

The Rarest Reserve was delicious with both tropical fruits and toffee-fudge notes with a lingering tawny port finish- and it sure should be tasty for the $250 price point. (It's made up of 20-23 year-old whiskies, will likely change in formula in future editions, and there are only 1,000 bottles available in the US.) They gave me a small sample bottle I'm nipping at to inspire this blog post, and I have to say it just keeps getting better with each sip. Good stuff.

Labels: irish_whiskey