Earlier this year I wrote about Micil, the Galway distillery owned by Pádraic Ó Griallais, Jimín Ó Griallais and Ross Tobin. Back then I featured their very tasty poitíns. They had also just started distilling their own whiskey – the first, Pádraic told me, in Galway for 150 years. Now they have come up with their own version of a cask offering, an opportunity for afficionados to buy their own unique cask of whiskey.
Instead of the usual 200-litre cask, for the Síolta Mhicil offering, Micil have sourced smaller 50-litre casks from Spanish barrel producer Casknolia. These, they say, were historically used in Connemara to surreptitiously transport illegal poitín without alerting excise men. The greater interaction between spirit and cask will produce more intense flavours.
Buyers can choose between three different mash bills for distillation, using varying amounts of barley, oats, wheat and rye, all 100 per cent Irish, malted and peated using turf from land in Connemara owned by the Micil family. Buyers can also opt for one of five different cask types for ageing: bourbon, oloroso, Pedro Ximénez, port and virgin chestnut. After four years maturation, the spirit will be hand- bottled, and a cask should yield 90-95 bottles at 46 per cent ABV. A cask costs €3,300, excluding VAT and duty of about €2,700, payable at bottling, which gives a final cost of about €65 a bottle
Micil say these will be the only casks distilled in their Galway distillery to be offered to the public and only 240 hand-made casks will be produced. For more information or to buy a cask, see micildistillery.com.
