Meet The Distiller Series
Ireland is an astoundingly exciting place for whiskey these days and we want to celebrate that excitement with the distillers who are making it all happen. From the old masters to the young up-starts and from far beyond the pale to the heart of Dublin, we’ll be taking an intensive look at the hands behind Ireland’s increasingly complicated whiskey landscape. Each tasting will take us to a new distillery and a new distiller as we celebrate the work of the past and look forward towards some staggeringly exciting plans for the years ahead.
Meet the Distiller: Midleton Masters
After two months of planning, we are proud to announce that we’ll be kicking this year off with the first instalment in a four-part “Meet The Distiller” series planned for 2014: a flight of Midleton whiskeys in the company of a visiting distillery master. Last year not only saw the newly expanded Midleton plant named world distillery of the year by Whisky Magazine’s “Icons of Whisky” awards but also marked the final days of master distiller Barry Crockett’s 47 years of service to Irish whiskey. After announcing his retirement in February, Mr. Crockett gradually passed on the spirit receiver to his longtime protégée Brian Nation.
But Midleton isn’t just its distiller and Brian won’t be working alone. One of the Corkonian distillery’s most unique and energetic features is that its tremendously diverse portfolio is really the collaborative product of a team of highly specialised, mutually respectful and co-dependent ‘masters.’ From the phenomenal wood policy of Kevin O’Gorman (Master of Maturation) to the technical precision of David Quinn (Master of Whiskey Science) to the creative vattings of Billy Leighton (Master Blender) to the detailed woodwork of Master Cooper Ger Buckley, the Midleton distillery has always been more than the sum of its parts. On Thursday, January 30th, we intend to explore as many of those parts as possible with a range of exciting offerings brought out by that same team of Midleton Masters. The selection has been left entirely to the personal preferences of our guest.
