Tag Archives: Connemara

Irish Whiskey Week – Day 7: Connemara 15yo 1992/2007 “Single Cask” (46%, OB, Cask #K92/34 4126)

Irish CloverThis will conclude our Irish Whiskey Week, a week that was lurking in the mud and only came into fruition when it was almost too late. I already published the first Tyrconnell review here and was writing the second Tyrconnell review (The Port one) when it hit me that I could make this into a Irish Whiskey Week. Irish Whiskey deserves that. In the end Ireland only has three distilleries that are “big”, Bushmills, Midleton and Cooley. No Bushmills Whiskey was reviewed here this time, Midleton was only featured with Jamesons 18yo and the rest are all really Cooley Whiskies. Even The Wild Geese are supposed to use Whiskey made by Cooley. Maybe I should have called this a Cooley Whisky Week…

Let’s finish this week off with a hopefully nice Single Cask Connemara, or peated Cooley Whiskey if you prefer. Strange enough this and a lot (but not all) of its brothers and sister single casks were bottled at 46% ABV instead of Cask Strength. When I look around, even all these Single Cask Connemara’s are sold out, so if you happen to find one get it if you’re interested.

Connemara Single Cask (with a different cask number)

Color: Light gold

Nose: Very light peat, creamy with vanilla. I smell more smoke than peat actually. Again a very elegant peated Irish Whiskey. Clay (a fresh uncolored clay brick kids play with). Very deep, toned down wet wood. Smoked kippers. Needs some air to open up, but I really like what I smell. Behind the smoke there is also some nice sweet fruits and salty licorice and mint. Meaty.

Taste: Sweet almonds. Sugared nuts. Small hint of peat, very elegant and toned down. Warming. Great balance. Ashes and a tiny amount of wood bitterness. Definitely a very tasty whisky, a mile (not miles) away from the regular young Cask Strength version, which is a lot cleaner, but also full of aroma, with less complexity. The finish is long and goes down the throat like a syrup, slowly and warms you up nicely. It leaves you behind with salty lips. I called this more complex than the cask strength version, but in itself it is not very complex, shall we say medium complexity?

Again we have here a very good Irish Whiskey that is impossible to buy these days. Not a lot of Connemara is bottled as a single cask and I’m wondering why. It is great stuff, even when its reduced to 46% ABV. I hope more bottling will be made like this. It’s a shame it’s that scarce.

This is the end, Irish Whiskey Week is over. A final comment? I have to say that this final Connemara is very different from my beloved Redbreast 15yo, and maybe even a tad better, what lovely stuff. I was surprised at the quality of the Jameson’s 18yo and how it reminded me of the Redbreast. Another plus was the quality of the Kilbeggan 15yo blend and the quality of both Connemara’s. But the sad thing is that all the good Irish stuff is hard to come by. Kilbeggan and Connemara Single Cask are both almost impossible to come by, and that’s a shame.

Points: 88

Irish Whiskey Week – Day 6: Connemara “Cask Strength” (57.9%, OB, 2007)

Irish CloverAnd here is yet another Cooley Whiskey with another brand name. I started with The Tyrconnell Single Malt which was acquired Cooley in 1988. Tyrconnell was mothballed already in 1925. The second Cooley Whiskey was Kilbeggan, a Blended Whiskey and here is the third one:  Connemara. Connemara is the brand used by Cooley, for their peated double distilled Single Malt Whiskey. There is a fourth one and that is Greenore, a Single Grain Whiskey made from corn exclusively.

Cooley Distillery is located on the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth and it was converted in 1987 from an older potato alcohol plant into a two column still distillery by John Teeling. In 2012 Beam Inc. acquired Cooley for €71 million.However, Beam itself was taken over by Suntory Holdings in 2014 to form Beam Suntory.

Connemara Cask Strength (mine looked like this but at 57.9% ABV)Color: White wine

Nose: Lightly peated, and lightly woody. Elegant, as long as a Whisk(e)y can be called elegant. Very light and young otherwise. Soft citrus fruits, lemon sherbet. No barley or hay, but there is some lemongrass. Very clean and a little bit meaty. Dirty wood smoke, like from a fire that was not only from (wet) logs. A type of peaty Whiskey that needs a copious dinner to go with it. Nice and interesting.

Taste: Yeah, lemon sherbet again and light peat ánd smoke. Fatty and sweet and very tasty. Even though this is very high in Alcohol at 57.9% ABV, it is not extremely hot. Its creamy, with Madagascar Vanilla, not so much vanilla ice-cream, just chew on a tiny portion of the dried bean. The peat makes this Whiskey chewy and the some even trickles through into the taste. So its prickly but not hot. Excellent stuff full of upfront aroma’s.

Sure it’s young, and yes it may be overly complex. But it is well made and very tasty and dirt cheap to boot. I already had one of these before, when it was fairly new and came in a tall green glass bottle. It was more than ten years ago, and it was young and clean back then too but I still was very impressed by it. This time there seem to be more dirty food notes into the Connemara, which makes it less clean, but what remained is that I’m still impressed by this Whiskey. Definitely a contender for the Cask Strength Bang-for-your-buck award (If I would have one). I have to get me some of this again. I only hope now Jack Teeling sold Cooley the new owners continue to make this Connemara as excellent as it ever was.

Points: 86