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Written by Edward Burke
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Page 4 of 4
The next whiskey to look out for on the Bushmills front, and in my opinion the finest of the lot, is Bushmills Single Malt 10. The ten refers not surprisingly to its age, something which shows through in the flavour-punch contained in this fine, fine drink. This is one for the straight-up, no-nonsense whiskey drinker who still likes to wear silk underwear from time to time. It’s a classy malt without pretensions. It has oak without the smoke and also honey without too much grain. Its oakishness is expressed in a mellow sweetness, which verges on the honey side of things. However, this does not mean that you will end up with a sickly sweet flavour on your tongue for the rest of the evening. Indeed, this is more like the honey in honeysuckle than the stuff you might use for, say, rubbing all over yourself to attract bees. Bushmills 10 is the flagship Irish single-malt and as such carries out her appointed duties admirably. One of these duties is to put paid to the idea that a single malt must be overpriced (read: Scotch) to be good. This is not by any means an attack on Scotch. However, it is the experience of the author that a bottle of Islay malt costing 70 to 90 Euro is easier neither on the palette nor on the wallet, especially when your wife comes home from an evening out to find you lying spatchcock on the couch with drips of the costly liquid all down the front of your favourite string vest. In such cases you may find yourself asking the question, Why did I spend so much money on a beverage made from grain and water; Why did I not buy Irish? And Where are my trousers? Bushmills 10 retails in these parts for roughly 30 Euro and is worth every drop.
Bushmills 16 is the final drink on my list today. It’s a delicious whiskey that easily takes its place on my top 15. It is a drink that’s so special it should only be drunk on select occasions. These might include birthdays, days that begin with T, Wednesdays, weekends and Mondays. As for production, Bushmills 16 matured for 15 years in two types of barrel. Half the maturation is done in casks used for making bourbon and the remaining half in sherry casks. When these have finished maturing (one of the best uses of “mature” if ever there was one) the two liquids are mixed in a vat, or as they say in the whiskey business, they are “married” (excuse the irritating quotation marks, and feel free to insert an appropriate marriage joke). When the two have become one, they are transferred for a final maturation in Port pipes — referring to oak casks in which Port was matured. All this business of maturing and transferring and cajoling may sound like a lot of extra work for what is really just glorified moonshine, jumped-up jungle juice or the golden Gaelic gange. However, the result more than makes up for all the effort. The 16 is a smooth, easy whiskey that still manages to have depth. The sherry casks do much to temper the vanilla, Yankee sweetness of the bourbon casks, resulting in a heartening mixture with a slight suggestion of toffee. The Port pipes add a mild fruitiness to the mix but you never forget you’re drinking whiskey. No, they haven’t blended the life out of the old girl yet. All these flavours reside happily side by side, arm in arm like a group of drunken sailors stumbling in unison, singing a favourite shanty in 3/4. If I have one criticism, it’s that it lacks some of the raw punch of its younger cousins. It is almost too refined, like a wealthy farmer whose healthy appearance and ruddy complexion belie a slight gut and a tendency to gout. But still a tasty…no, very tasty drop and one which, for its quality, is still excellent value and, once again, certainly much more affordable than some of the wildly overpriced Scotches out there.
So there you have it. Game, set and match to Bushmills. As you may have gathered from my gushing tone, all of the above are great whiskies and deserve to be tried one after the other, or on separate, multiple occasions. They are in most cases reasonably priced, especially if you’re passing through the duty-free section and will be on holidays for several weeks. If this is the case, I don’t recommend drinking a full bottle of any of the above whiskeys and bumping into a group of Swiss back-packers back at the youth-hostel. However, do drink it and let me know what you think. Or, on second thoughts, spare me the drunken emails and just drink it.
Sláinte mhaith agus beannachtaí.
[1] See www.thewhiskyguide.com/Irish/Bushmills.html for more on this.
[2] During Prohibition, illegal whiskey was often called Irish Whiskey, even though it had actually been distilled in America. This fact, coupled with the enormous increase in the popularity of Scotch “whisky”, resulted in Irish whiskey becoming, let’s say, less popular.
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