WHISKEY HISTORY IN 8 PARTS
“Those that don’t learn from history, repeat its mistakes”
STYLES OF IRISH WHISKEY
“from 3 basic styles we get infinite variety”
TIMELINE OF WHISKEY
“from the east to the west and beyond“
1100 AD – The first written record of whiskey comes from 1405 in the Irish Annals of Clonmacnoise recording the death of a chieftain to “taking a surfeit of aqua vitae” at Christmas.
1541 AD – Irish Whiskey was beginning to gain fans including ‘Queen Elizabeth I’ who in 1541 had stocks of it delivered to her court. Queen Elizabeth considered our ‘usquebaugh’ better than the aqua vitae of England.
1100 AD – Britian imposed a tax on all whiskey at the rate of four pence per gallon of spirit. This tax slowed the legal whiskey trade dramatically as all whiskey distillers in Ireland where to register and pay taxes.
1759 AD – law prohibiting distillers from using any ingredients other than malt, grain, potatoes or sugar in the production of whiskey is passed by parliament.
1770 AD – whiskey only accounted for 25% of the total duty on spirits, while duty on imported rum accounted for 51%, with the remainder divided equally between brandy and gin. in 1790 whiskeys share is 66%.
1830 – Because of over taxation and multiple laws there were only 20 legal distilleries in existence. The tax laws were finally relaxed and by 1830 the number of legal Irish distilleries had risen to 90.
1831 AD – After inventing a ‘continuous still’ and improving the technology involved in distillation, Irish inventor Aeneas Coffey patented the Coffey still. This enabled manufacturers to produce whiskey more efficiently and at a lower cost.
1850 – The first blended whisky was produced. Andrew Usher mixed traditional pot still whiskey with that of a new batch produced in a Coffey still.
1100 AD – Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industrys standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.
STYLES OF IRISH WHISKEY
“From 3 basic styles we get infinite variety”
Here at Dublin Whiskey Tours we get asked quite a lot about the different styles of Irish Whiskey. There are 4 styles of Irish whiskey – single grain, single malt, single pot still and blended whiskey. From these first 3 pure styles we get blended whiskey, which is the most popular style of Irish whiskey in the world – some notable examples are Jameson and Tullamore Dew.