JUST A WEE TASTE

This time of year always brings out the Whiskey. My mother and her mother would put whiskey in their coffee to "chase away the chill". As a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, I would sit with my mom and watch the snow fall out the window. She would give me, "a wee sip' of her whiskey to help fight off cold and flu.

So what is this whiskey? It is the Celtic water of life. The aqua vitae as the Romans called it, when they first came to the Celtic islands. In Gaelic it is called, "uisce beatha" and the English took the term uisce and made it whisky. Foklore says that it was invented / discovered by the Celts in Wales around 356 AD. The first written record was made in Ireland in 1405.

There are different kinds of Whisky. Scotch being the best known. There are Canadian whiskys and American whiskys. There is even a Japanese whisky that is a good copy of Scotch. Regardless, the one true Whiskey is Irish. Irish Whiskey is distilled three time in a column still and aged in wooden cask that once held sherry. The best of these are the "pure pot still whiskey." They are made of 100% barley and distilled in a copper stills.

When the original term Whisky was formed, to give an English name to the product then known as Usice or Uisge, all Whisky was called by the same name. Around 1870 the Scots were making a poor quality product and flooding the market with cheap watered down whisky. Irish distillers switched to calling their product Whiskey by adding the "E". Soon Americans did the same.

Today there are three major Irish Distillers, Midleton, Cooley, and Bushmills. But only Cooley is Irish owned. Bushmills, as me mum would say, is in the NORTH....and it's Protestant Whiskey. No REAL Irishman would drink it. Jameson, the Whiskey I grew up with, is produced by Midleton and owned by Pernod-Ricard.

Now I'll be havn a wee taste. And, a merry christmas to you all.