All right it’s true whiskey originated in Ireland. OK I said it. It appears that the scholar-monks of the Celtic church first produced whiskey here for medicinal purposes (yea right). These are the same guys that spread the gospel at the end of the Dark Ages – my guess is that whiskey was the enlightenment the known world needed.
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As with the other whiskey producers of long ago the Irish farmer, while eking out a meager existence began distilling whiskey to supplement his income. In the eighteenth century, Ireland boasted 2,000 distilleries; today there are only 2.
Up until the beginning of the nineteenth century, much of the whiskey was flavoured with herbs and roots and was commonly referred to as cognac. The uppity town’s folk drank the cognac while the country folk and the poor drank real whiskey. As usual the government began whiskey taxation forcing the small distillers underground and turning honest working folk into smugglers.
Back in the nineteenth century Irish distillers, John powers, John Jameson and others profited by the new legislation thus consolidating whiskey production. At the time of the American prohibition Ireland won it’s independence and Britain and Europe imposed a trade embargo on Irish goods. With the Americans being the largest importer of whiskey and the new trade embargo the Irish whiskey industry as well as the economy as a whole was decimated. To add insult to injury the Irish government stopped all whiskey production during WW II. By 1952 Scotland’s whisky exports exceeded 32 million pounds while Ireland’s whiskey exports were a paltry 500,000 pounds.
There were only 4 distilleries remaining in the 1960’s, three of them joined forces leaving Bushmills on it’s own in Northern Ireland. This lasted until 1973 when Bushmills joined the new Irish Distillers Group and began producing its whiskey in Cork. There is now a second distiller in the country; Cooley who is producing quality whiskies and avidly vying for a foot hold in the local and international markets.
