An Cliabhán, a new collection of single malt spirits from the Dingle Distillery, is a great product. It’s not a whiskey as it is much too young, but through great design and very smart thinking it will bring even the most experienced of whiskey lovers to a new understanding of their favourite spirit. This is a glance into the future of Irish whiskey and a confident one at that.
The name An Cliabhán was dreamt up in O'Flaherty's bar in Dingle and roughly translates as the birth or the cradle, explains Oliver Hughes, one of the founders of Dingle Distillery.
Irish whiskey has to mature for at least three years and one day before it gets the badge of honour of being labelled Irish whiskey, he says. An Cliabhán is instead a collection of single malt spirits from the Dingle distillery which have been matured for at least one year in each of a bourbon, port or Olorosso cask. In the pack, beautifully designed by Mark Keating (who has designed all of the Dingle products, including their award-winning gin and vodka), you get four variations on the Dingle products: a 25cl bottle of pure new made spirit, collected from the third and final still in Dingle and cut with spring water from the distillery well to 63.3% abv, 127% proof and three 25cl bottles of each of the variations: port, bourbon and sherry.
You also get two tulip tasting glasses and, bizarrely at first, a glass laboratory pipette - more on that later.
This first bottle’s contents, the pure spirit, are crystal clear as it has not yet been casked. The idea is to cut this triple-distilled spirit with a little more water to your own taste and then try it, feeling its warmth and flavour. It's quite an experience and you get to understand first-hand the driving force behind this brand.
Next, you try one of the three 25cl bottles of the spirit matured for one year in each of bourbon, port and sherry casks so that you can see, smell and taste the difference between each of the cask types. It is these cask types that give each of the variations their identity and distinctive taste. They all start from the same spirit but have each developed in three different ways in the cask.
When you try a whiskey for the first time it is the magic that has happened inside the cask that you are testing. A distilled pure spirit fills the casks and this combines with the natural chemicals in the wood and the residue of whichever drink (port, sherry or bourbon, for example) that was matured within it previously. The sheer passage of time and nature then do their job.
Until the maturation process is complete, even master distillers worry. Science simply can’t predict the outcome. And so to this pipette: An Cliabhán comes with two tasting glasses and a thin glass laboratory-style pipette, designed to allow you to become the blender. Peter Mosley, head distiller at Dingle says this is the really fun part. He suggests starting with 80 per cent bourbon and adding 10 per cent port, 10 per cent sherry. See what the outcome is. How do they marry up? Then, he suggests, try 60 per cent bourbon, 20 per cent port and 20 per cent sherry. A whole other experience will be borne.
Between the four bottles you have 100 cls to play with and by the time you’re finished you’ll be a lot wiser about the delicacy and complex decisions needed to produce incredible whiskey. It will at least 2016, he says, before we get to try the fully-matured (and as-yet unnamed) Dingle whiskey but while we're waiting An Cliabhán will fit the bill.
