Irish Whiskey Corner - Old Jameson Distillery

Yes, my friends after 1,5 years I was able to beat my laziness! Please applaud.

What else would be more appropriate than celebrate the fact with a shot of whiskey and leave the whisky to the others (becoming more and more of a Dubliner after all)? Actually I prefer to leave both of them to the others as I can't really stand the taste (neither Guinness, what am I doing in Dublin?). Anyway, I wanted to mark the rare occasion and drink it in the most original spot: the Old Jameson Distillery, so I opened my old guide for some info. First of all I could not find it in the index, had to browse through the Dublin chapter to get a hint about where to go under the title Irish Whiskey Corner. It reads:

Just north of St Michan's Church, the Irish Whiskey Corner (phone: 8725566) is in an old warehouse on Bow St, Dublin 7, and the admission charge of £IR3 includes entry to the museum, a short film and a sample of Irish whiskey. From May to October there are tours Monday to Friday at 11 am, and 2:30 and 3:30 pm; in winter only the afternoon tour operates.

First of all that phone number is no longer in service, try the one listed on the website, but if you hate "choosing from the following options" for minutes, simply browse through those pages for info. I have a few favourites on that site, hidden gems that are really worth digging deep as it would certainly give you a good laugh. For example under online tasting (!) menu it says: The ideal way to follow the tasting is with a glass of Jameson (...). 

Going quickly through the obvious, the entry fee is no longer measured in £IR, but Euros (wonder for how long) and the number is slightly up: 13 for adults, 8 for children.

The whole building was completely refurbished as part of Smithfield rejuvenation under HARP, but the remaining of the sentence is still true: the address is the same, the old factory is only accessible through a guided tour and you can sample the uisce beatha (high and mighty name for whiskey). Jameson is now made in Cork and the premises on Bow Street are converted into the museum. All right, all right for spitting hairs: something called vatting is still made in Dublin, and to know what the process is exactly, you either have to go to the Old Jameson Distillery or the lazy ones can check Wikipedia. To tell the truth I did not hear the description as I was too busy to entertain a 10 month old who (for some reason) was not too much excited about the alcohol making process. 

The movie at the beginning is nice, I loved the carriage driver, of course. For myself the most special part of the whole experience was the smells, scents. In one of the old casks you can smell the dried barley which is just lovely. I can even wear that as a perfume! During the tour they kept repeating "a nice honey like sweet smell that is the alcohol escaping from the casks through the wood" and in the last room you are able to sample that scent which was the biggest disappointment: it is the very nice description of the common smell of every pub around Dublin! It's certainly not honey like, I'm telling you.

All in all, visiting the distillery is a good way to spend an afternoon if you have nothing else to do. Probably would have been better if I did show any kind of interest towards that specific drink.

What is this?

As I have not got any own ideas in my life, except for having oatmeal with strawberry sauce (disgusting) I am starting a blog based on a book from the past. In case you don’t know where I stole the idea from, it’s the movie Julie and Julia. So I have a Lonely Planet guide of Ireland from the 1980s thanks to my beloved friend Blanca, who bought it for me on a flea market a few months back; and currently I live in Dublin for quite a while now (quite a while: enough for wishing I could escape today, but due to the current biggest cliché economic downturn I am stuck for at least another grey year). My project will be to sightsee Ireland based on this out-of-date book and report what I found in the country. I planned to start with Dublin cause I know it as I know where I pissed on a street after a concert, where can I have the best goat cheese salad, what shitface means in real life, I use ‘gorgeous’ a way too often, and understand an Irish taxi driver from the North. It probably won’t be many pages wasted on Docklands, which is my favourite part of the capital now, but it was basically non-existent in the 80s (apart from warehouses and regular stabbing, but none of that hit the gorgeous –see!- pages of any travel guide). I think it will be pubs like Temple Bar or Stag’s Head mentioned in it, but so curious about all the others. For example I heard that Pearse corner used to have glorious years, but now only the ones with a brave heart should enter.

Let’s see how often can I post (depending on my laziness, of course).