Max "Bunny" Sparber

I TEND TO DRINK OLDER WHISKIES. Not crazy old; I can't afford that. But 10-plus-years old. And it's hard not to think about their age when you drink them. Somebody cut some barley and let it ferment, then distilled it, then stuck it in a barrel, and it waited there for a decade before finding itself in the cup before me, on its way toward my belly. That's a long time to wait to get where you're going, but good things often take time. I was reading about JRR Tolkein writing The Lord of the Rings. He was asked to do a follow-up to The Hobbit, which was, after all, quite a popular book. And so he started in 1937. And then finished in 1949.

And then there's Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, while we're on the subject of Ireland. It took Joyce 17 years to write it. I'm sure there was a whiskey that was put into a cask when Joyce started and then bottled when he finished, and I bet it was delicious.

Knappogue Castle whiskey has the oldest Irish whiskey on the market, if you can find it: They sell a vintage that dates back to 1951. 58 years old. You can probably get older wiskeys if you're a collector, but Knappogue Castle's version was recently bottled. The whole undertaking, if you read their Web site, sounds like the undertaking of several very wealthy Americans with quite good taste -- the whiskey is named after a castle they purchased and have restored, and the whiskey is a product of collecting vintage whiskey from the B. Daly Distillery.

My liquor store doesn't carry the 1951 vintage of Knappogue Castle, and, even if they did, I probably couldn't afford it. They do, however, carry the 1995 vintage, which sells for about what Jameson 12-year or Red Breast sells for -- in the $30-some-odd dollar range. But you're going to find Jameson and Red Breast almost everywhere; Knappogue Castle is a little harder to come by. They're a single-male Irish whiskey produced by a pot still, and they only manufacture so much of a certain vintage, and, when that sells out, they're done. They also fiddle with their whiskey from year to year, so one vintage is likely to taste different than others. The 1995, as an example, has been aged in bourbon barrels, like Red Breast, and apparently has a more complicated flavor than the previous vintage as a result. I haven't had the previous vintage, so I can't comment on that. But I have ben enjoying the 1995 vintage, and can speak about that.

First of all, this is a whiskey with a very light color -- almost a straw yellow. Apparently, some whiskeys use artificial coloring. Knappogue Castle doesn't, so whatever color the 1995 vintage has comes directly from whatever it got from its bourbon barrels during the decade-plus it waited to be bottled. The whiskey has a light and very appealing nose I really like the smell of a good Irish whiskey, and this one is marvelous: light but complicated. Whiskey reviewers typically like to list whatever comes to mind when they smell and sip whiskey: "It was chalky with a hibiscus undertone, and, at the tail end, there were hints of sausage and mimeographed paper." This is probably a useful way to do things, but I'm not interested in smelling whiskey and seeing what odors come to mind. Whiskey smells like whiskey to me, and it's a smell I like, and I don't really spend much time saying "was that Jasmine? No, no! It was goldenrod!" Plenty of other sites do that, so if you're looking for a whiskey that tastes like apple and burning tire, they'll be of assistance.

Me, I'm not really interested in the associative tastes of whiskey. It might taste like loganberries, but there's no loganberries in whiskey. So I'll tell you what Knappogue Castle is, instead of what it tastes like. The whiskey is a single malt, which means they made the whiskey from one kind of malted barley, which is pretty unusual in liquor manufacturing: Most are a blend of several malts and a neutral spirit. Canadian whiskeys, as an example, tend to be blends, and, if I understand my history of alcohol properly, the whole point of creating blended whiskeys was to smartly combine various mediocre whiskeys and neutral spirits into something palatable, if a bit nondescript. Single malts, when well-made, are not only palatable, but also quite distinctive. For instance, a lot of fancy Scotches are single malts, and small batch, and made in a pot still. Scotch snobs often prefer single-malt, unblended whiskies, because of their distinct flavors and a sort of boldness of taste. They typical cost more than blends, but, if you like the taste of whiskey, and you want to try whiskies that are distinct from each other, unblended is te way to go.

So Knappogue doesn't taste like other whiskeys. In fact, if you're a scotch drinker, I'd say the whiskey tastes a lot like a scotch without that "did I just swallow a clod of dirt?" flavor that distinguishes scotch, as a result of its use of peat fires in making the drink. No, Knappogue Castle is bold and flavorful, but has the sweetness of Irish whiskey, rather than the earthiness of scotch. It isn't as spicy as the more expensive Jamesons and doesn't have the chocolate flavor of Bushmill's drinks, but is malty and complicated and has a flavor of its own. It's a very smooth whiskey; I typically drink whiskey with water or ice to cut that thing that that strong alcohol will do, where it burns your throat and causes you to cough. Even drunk straight, Knappogue Castle doesn't hit you like that, or, not much, at least. No, you get a very nice blast of flavor from it, with a hint of bourbon (it's aged in bourbon barrels), but not so much as Jameson 12-year or Redbreast, which have a realy strong bourbon quality to them

If I had to sum up this whiskey in one sentence, I'd say it's like scotch without the peat, which is a description I expect might make sense when you actually drink the whiskey, but is a little hard to imagine otherwise. Perhaps it would be more useful for me to say that this is a terrific top shelf whiskey for people who don't want to drop $80 on a whiskey, and are looking for something light and sweet, but nonetheless complicated; I expect this would be especially good for scotch fans.

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