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The Sound of Whiskey
400 Years of Bushmills Distillery
Freedom an' whisky gang thegither, according to Scotland's national bard Robert Burns. Whisky and song go together, according to both Scotsmen and Irishmen. There is an argument which nation invented the Water of Life a thousand years ago. At least, Bushmills Distillery in County Antrim in the North of Ireland may claim being the oldest licensed distillery still in existence. Going strong since 1608!
The nine Glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland are an officially designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Glens were Gaelic-speaking until the early 20th century.
Far across yonder blue lies a true fairy land With the sea rippling over the shingle and sand Where the gay honeysuckle is luring the bee And the Green Glens of Antrim are calling to me |
Because of their remoteness traditional culture survived well, and there are many notable singers and musicians associated with this area.
Uisce Beatha - Water of Life
The word whisk(e)y
is an anglicisation of the Gaelic term uisce beatha, which translates as
water of life, which itself derives from the Latin aqua vitae.
Distilling is believed to be dating to the Middle Ages.
Barley-based spirits first appear in Irish records in 1556.
Once almost every town in Ireland had a distillery.
By the end of the 18th century there were over 2,000 stills in operation.
In the late 19th century over 400 brands of Irish whiskey were sold in the United States. However, when
prohibition
closed off Ireland's largest export market, many distilleries had to close.
Today, Ireland has only three distilleries left:
Bushmills,
Midleton
and Cooley.
Traditionally, Irish whiskey was distilled from a mash of mixed malted and unmalted grains (referred to as
pure pot still), whereas Scotch
is distilled from malted grain
(single malt) or unmalted grain (mixed with malt whisky to create
blended whisky). Today, most Irish whiskey is blended from a mixture of pot still whiskey and cheaper grain whiskey.
Most Irish whiskey is distilled three times. Peat is almost never used in the malting process, so smoky overtones common to Scotch are not present.
Once upon a time, whisky was generally spelled without the extra e. In the 1870s,
the Irish and American distilleries adopted the spelling whiskey to distinguish their higher quality product from cheaper Scottish spirits produced with the
column still.
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James Stoddard Moore (1844-1939) of Cushendall was a sailor, a goldminer and a soldier. When he returned to Ireland, he became a tramp. He was called "Dusty Rhodes," wandered the local roads, and would give poems to farmers in return for board and lodgings.
The birds sang loud |
Fiddler Frank McCollam of Ballycastle composed the well-known hornpipe "The Home Ruler" in the 1960s. Many people assume it was named with politics in mind, dedicated to a hero of Irish self-determination. However, Frank, a one-time master of the Ballycastle Orange Lodge, named the tune after his wife, Sally.
When the A and B parts of "The Home Ruler" are reversed, the tune is sometimes called "The Hangman's Noose." The title refers to John McNaughton of Bushmills, who was found guilty in 1761 of murdering his lover. McNaughton was convicted and sentenced to be publicly hanged. However, when they carried out the sentence the rope snapped. He was offered a pardon, but refused it, saying that he was not going to be known as Half-hanged McNaughton for the rest of his life (-> FW#23).
The rope it broke, not once but twice By the laws of man you can’t hang thrice The people cried, “Let him go free Don’t hang him high on the gallows tree” He placed the rope around his neck A rope so strong it would not break “Half-hanged now I ne’er will be So hang me high on the gallows tree” |
In Glenravel's Glen there lives a man |
Today, traditional music sessions are held in venues such as McCarroll's Bar in Ballycastle and the Skerry Inn in Newtown Crommelin. The Traditional Singers' Club with its no guitars policy meets on the last Friday of each month during the winter in McCollam's Bar in Cushendall. Every June, the annual Fleadh Amhrán agus Rince, a festival of traditional singing and dancing, and the County Antrim Fleadh Cheoil are hosted somewhere in the area.
Bushmills is a small village on the north coast of Antrim. It is close to the famous Giant's Causeway, carved by the sea from the basalt rock, but legend tells us that a giant had built a path of stones across the sea so that he could walk to Scotland. Perhaps to bring whiskey to the Scottish, or vice versa.
The town is best known as the location of the Old Bushmills Distillery, which lays claim to being the oldest licenced distillery in the world! The claim is based on the fact that in 1608 a licence was granted to Sir Thomas Phillipps, Deputy for the Plantation of Ulster, for the next seaven yeres, within the countie of Colrane, otherwise called the Rowte, in Co. Antrim, by himselfe or his servauntes, to make, drawe, and distil such and soe great quantities of aquavite, usquabagh and aqua composita, as he or his assignes shall thinke fitt; and the same to sell, vent, and dispose of to any persons, yeeldinge yerelie the somme 13s 4d ...
Food for marketing people. However, when Alfred Barnard visited Bushmills on his tour around Britain's distilleries in 1885, Bushmills did not even make pure malt whiskey. It made pure pot still, and when in 1891 the company launched their new pure malt whiskey, Old Glynn Bush, they proudly displayed 1784 as their year of establishment. That makes Bushmills still the oldest distillery in Ireland.
We shall never know for sure. Records that survived the great fire of 1885 and had been moved to headquarters in Belfast were destroyed during the numerous raids of the German Luftwaffe in 1941. Fact is, Bushmills marketed the first Irish single malt whiskey for many decades, and the only one until the foundations of Cooley Distilleries in 1989.
Certainly whiskey had been made in the area before 1608, and the imposition of an excise tax as early as 1661 didn't stop farmers to produce their wee still. Before the building of the coast road from Glenarm to Ballycastle, especially the Glens had been a place apart and the centre of producing illegal private distillation whiskey, in Ireland called poitín or poteen (meaning pot) or the craythur (from created).
A locally much admired poitín maker was Mickey McIlhatton, the King of the Glens. He went into the hills day and night for 50 years, he also was a fiddler and a shepherd, probably in this order. His first charge was withdrawn, after assuring the judge that the fiddle would sound much sweeter if rubbed with poitín. Mickey eventually was made famous by a song written by Bobby Sands (-> FW#23) and sung by Christy Moore (-> FW#2).
"The Bushmills Song" and "Dear Old Bushmills" are the names of two traditionals songs mentioned, however, I couldn't uncover the lyrics.
Buy me a Becks beer or pass me a bong, Gimmie some Bushmills, I’ll sing you this song |
Today the Old Bushmills Distillery belongs to the Paris-based Pernod-Ricard group, and the site is a major tourist attraction, with around 110,000 visitors per year. Its twin pagodas, built in the early 19th century to ventilate the maltings, are the town's dominant feature. The late Irish writer John McGuffin, author of "In Praise of Poteen," was particularily fond of the real thing, i.e. home-made production, but when it had to be licensed spirits, he exclaimed: Bushmills ten years old single malt is undoubtedly the best whiskey in the world.
Tasting Notes:
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Photo Credits:
(1) The Old Bushmills Distillery,
(2) Dusty Rhodes,
(3) Pencil drawing of Mickey McIlhatton on the wall of the
Crosskeys Inn, Toome
[-> FW#23],
(4) Bushmills whiskey
(unknown);
(5) Bushmills whiskey (by Walkin' Tom).
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© The Mollis - Editors of FolkWorld; Published 11/2008
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