25
June 2025 Whiskey Tasting and OAT Tour Begins
Today was moving day for us as our Overseas Adventure Travel
tour began today and we joined our traveling companions who just arrived from
the states. For the next 2 weeks we will
be traveling together around the northern and western coasts of Ireland. Last night was
the warmest night so far and the Temple Bar Inn does not have air conditioned
rooms (in Ireland it is quite common to have no air conditioning and much
smaller rooms than we are used to in the States. So neither one of us got much sleep. Thank goodness our new hotel will have air
conditioning.
However, before we
left the area around the Temple Bar, we had one more stop to make. Although we had already visited the Whiskey
Museum, you cannot visit Dublin without visiting the Jameson Whiskey Distillery
(notice that I have ignored the Guiness Beer Brewery entirely – neither Bill
nor I enjoy Guiness – it is much too bitter for Bill and I do not enjoy
beer. But we did have a sample taste of
Guiness and it is much better tasting here in Ireland than it is in the
states. I found it to taste more like
iced coffee. And for those that do like
Guiness, they also have a tour and tasting at their brewery here in Dublin
Founded in 1780,
the Jameson Bow Street Distillery was the original site for the distillation of
its famous Jameson Irish Whiskey. It
closed in 1971 when operations were relocated to a new distillery in Midleton
in County Cork. Today it is a visitor’s
center that provides tours and whiskey tastings and includes a bar and gift
shop. Our visited included a cocktail
made with Jameson Irish Whiskey to get us in the mood (I had a lime ginger
drink and Bill had straight Jameson), a guided tour which explained the history
and operation of the old distillery, and ended with a comparative tasting of
three Jameson whiskeys (Jameson Crested (not sold in the States), Jameson
Original, and Jameson Black Barrel). We
like the Black Barrel best. Our tour
guide explained the process of “Gran to Glass” that they use to make the
whiskey – from the malting of the barley to the three process of distilling to
the maturation in oak barrels. The
barrels are actually used bourbon barrels from Kentucky
In the late 1960s,
when sales of Irish whiskey were falling, Jameson, Powers, and Cork Distillers combined
forces and created the Irish Distillers Group. All use the distillery in Midleton to make
their whiskey. Today, Jameson has over 2
million barrels/year of whiskey maturing in its warehouses. It was a very interesting tour and the
whiskeys were very good
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| Our Three Whiskey Samples |
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| My Ginger-Lime Whiskey Drink |
Following the tour,
we found a taxi to take us back to the Temple Bar Inn to retrieve our luggage
and then on to our new hotel – Hyatt Centric The Liberties. We had lunch there and then met our Trip
Leader (TL) Tom Kiely and several of our new traveling companions.
At 6 PM we all
gathered (there are 16 on this tour) in the Hyatt’s restaurant for our welcome
dinner.
