History, Passion, and Perfection; distilled.
Many associate Irish whiskey with those on supermarket shelves, dwarfed by row-upon-row of Scotch and Bourbon. But travel back hundreds of years and Irish whiskey was dominant worldwide. From the British Empire to America and beyond, each glass was more likely to hold a taoscán of Irish than a dram of Scotch. The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. was born from a dream of restoring premium Irish whiskey to those glorious heights; one rare, carefully crafted single malt at a time.
The Craft Irish Whiskey Co.
The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. is dedicated to restoring the reputation of Irish single malt as a sipping whiskey by reinvigorating the art of whiskey-making. But the company has reinvented this art; using science and sparing no expense to elevate every element - from the perfect whiskey to the perfect design and the perfect experience - in a manner more akin to a Michelin-starred experience.
Every whiskey is taken on a journey, under the watchful eye of whiskey master, Jay Bradley. The barrels are underfilled, going against the cost-cutting technique of filling barrels to the top. While others wait for the ‘Angel’s Share’ to evaporate and create space for oxygen to trigger maturation, underfilling barrels allows the alchemy of wood, spirit and oxidation to begin at once, bringing greater complexity, smoothness, and viscosity.
It is commonplace to add water at bottling to reduce the ABV, but this dulls the whiskey’s flavour profile. The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. adds it before maturation for new-make spirits, and before finishing for the more mature whiskeys. The water and spirit marry over the years so both draw the full range of phenolic compounds from the wood to create intense flavour profiles. There’s no better way to taste whiskey than from the barrel, and the company recreates this intense perfection by bottling directly from the cask.
The company believes age statements are not indicative of a whiskey’s quality. It commissioned scientific studies that show a whiskey’s flavour will vary over the course of just a few months. For example, in the study, one whiskey scored higher in January than when it was tasted again in June, with the quality fluctuating in peaks and troughs. Tasting that whiskey regularly ensures it is bottled at its peak, not when it reaches a preferred age for marketing purposes. The Devil’s Keep was bottled at 29.9 years - others would have waited for a 30 year age statement, but the notes of the Hungarian Oak would have become too dominant.
In its obsessive pursuit of perfection, The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. has torn up the rulebook. Its methods are more costly, requiring more time, barrels and storage, but as the award-winning and record-breaking whiskeys prove, the result is undeniably priceless.
World’s Best Irish Single Malt
While The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. won a staggering 17 awards across taste and design in 2021 to become the most highly awarded new whiskey company in history, 2022 is promising to be even better. The company was recently awarded World’s Best Irish Single Malt across all categories at the World Whiskies Awards for The Devil’s Keep. With that award, the company entered the history books with its first whiskey and first entry winning the ultimate award. Not only that, its third and fourth releases, The Brollach and The Taoscán, won Bronze and Silver.
A Perfect Score
These join historic wins from the A’Design Awards; the world’s most prestigious and influential design awards. In 2021, the company made history with its first entry, The Devil’s Keep, winning Gold - just 0.1 point away from Platinum - and becoming the only whiskey ever to win this distinguished award.
In 2022, The Emerald Isle won Platinum with a perfect score, making it the only spirit to ever do so and securing its place as the world’s #1 design of the year. The Taoscán took Gold, and the yet-to-be-released, The Aodh, won a rare Limited Edition award, one of only 35 in its history.
Not only are the A’Design Awards judged against thousands of other entries, but the judges then take into account a company’s previous products, looking for innovation and an elevation of design. So winning in subsequent competitions becomes increasingly difficult. These wins cement the company’s designer, Tiago Russo, as the world’s #1 luxury product designer and make it the only company in the award’s history to win all four entries with a 100% success rate across two years.
Restoring Irish whiskey to its rightful place
In crafting whiskeys of award-winning calibre, The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. sits alongside others in the Irish whiskey industry, working tirelessly to raise the ghosts of the old whiskey masters. Together they’re restoring Irish whiskey to the fame and glory it once held, to become the drink of choice for connoisseurs and collectors once more.
By Rebecca Lancaster