Ireland: Jameson

One of our first looks at Ireland will be at it's most famous whiskey, Jameson. Jameson is a single-distillery Irish whiskey. The Jameson distilling tradition has always insisted upon producing every component of their whiskey "from grain to glass." Jameson is similar in its adherence to the single distillery principle to the single malt tradition, but Jameson combines malted barley with unmalted or "green" barley. The most famous component within Jameson is the legendary "Pure Pot Still" component unique to Irish whiskey distilling tradition.

The company was established in 1780 when John Jameson established the Bow Street Distillery in Dublin. Originally one of the six main Dublin Whiskeys, Jameson it is now distilled in Cork, although vatting vatting still takes place in Dublin. With annual sales of over 31 million bottles, Jameson is by far the best selling Irish whiskey in the world, as it has been internationally since the early 1800's when John Jameson along with his son (also named John) was producing over a million gallons annually.

Like many of Ireland's most famous products, the brand is today foreign owned, in this case by the French beverage conglomerate Pernod Ricard which owns among other things the alcoholic division of the former Seagrams company and also owns the maker of the brand of whiskeys "Wild Turkey. Its stock on European exchanges has performed much better than others being down only 34% in the latest market collapse.

Whisky is a shortened form of "usquebaugh", which English borrowed from Irish Gaelic "uisce beatha" and Scottish Gaelic "uisge beatha". This compound descends from Old Irish uisce, "water," and bethad, "of life," and meaning literally "water of life." (It thus meant the same thing as the name of another drink, aquavit, which comes from Latin aqua vītae, "water of life" which had been applied to intoxicating drinks since early 14th century. (cf. Fr. eau de vie "brandy")).*

As a side note many of my ancestors originally came from the areas around Cork. Here we are last year at Cork's main harbor, "Cobh" where many people from all over Ireland departed across the seas to foreign lands.

*Source Irish Distillers via Wikipedia.