Irish whiskey is the grandaddy of all whiskeys worldwide. It’s arguably the oldest form of the spirit and was instrumental in the birth of American whiskeys and bourbon. Unfortunately, over the course of the 20th century, Irish whiskey took a couple hard hits thanks to spiteful British trade embargoes, American Prohibition, and the rise of Scotch whiskey.

Today, Irish whiskey is making a monumental comeback and Jameson whiskey is at the forefront of that growth. They’ve been expanding their own brands by focusing what we, the consumers, want as our taste evolve. Jameson is also bringing local distillers like Redbreast, Powers, and Spot into the fold like one big happy Irish whiskey family.

I was in Dublin recently and got the chance to tour the new facilities at the Jameson Distillery at Bow Street. It’s a deep dive into all things Ireland and Irish whiskey, plus it’s got a great bar. I was lucky enough to sit down with Brian Nation, Head Distiller of Jameson, and gush about how much I love Irish whiskey. We also delved into the spirit’s history and some of the best Irish whiskeys you can drink right now.

How did you get into distilling?

By complete accident. My background is chemical and process engineering. So when I was finishing up in college, I would have expected to end up in either an oil refinery or a pharmaceutical plant. I worked in both, didn’t quite enjoy either of them and an opportunity came up to work as an environmental engineer for a year within the distillery. So I went for the job, I got it and when I got into the distillery I became friendly with the now production director, Tommy Keane.

I did that for about three years then I moved across into production. I really got a good grounding in the previous years in projects around the plant and around the technology. I really got to understand the whole process side of it, the whole intricacies of the distillation process, intricacies of the brewing process, and basically all of the secrets and craft of what we do.

Taking over as head distiller meant the absolute world to me. It wasn’t something that I set out to do. If you’d asked me 15 years ago where did I want to go, I wouldn’t have said I wanted to be head distiller of Jameson. It wouldn’t have been something that I even thought about. But when I started working in the distillery and started moving through the process and getting to understand it a bit more, I became very, very excited about it

Read More at source: UPROXX