Irish whiskey month – part 5: Clonakilty Port cask finish

Triple distilled blended Irish whiskey, 43.6% ABV, Unchill filtered, might be coloured

To conclude Irish whiskey month, let’s take it down south, to Cork. Cork (the county, not the city), more than Dublin or anywhere else in Ireland, seems to be where it’s at when it comes to whiskey. Obviously, there’s Midleton, but in recent years we’ve seen West Cork, Dúchas, and Clonakilty emerge as well.

Clonakilty Distillery is, what’s in a name, located in Clonakilty, a quiet coastal town of some 3600 people. Here, the Scully family have been farming land for 9 generations, when in 2018 they decided to actually do something useful with all that barley growing on their fields. And so Clonakilty distillery was born. With an ideal location - benign climate and weather and plenty of natural resources to become a grain-to glass- distillery - , they set to work and started distilling early 2019, bringing in Paul Corbett from Teeling to take on the role of master distiller to provide the necessary experience. As you can probably do the math, their spirit is yet to mature some more in order to be called whiskey, so what we’re looking at here is sourced whiskey, which has been put down in port casks from Clonakilty and left to mature in their Atlantic Warehouse.

A quick visit to their website tells me that that Clonakilty distillery keeps the environment close at heart, as they support the Whale and Dolphin Conservatory and also, they are a member of Origin Green, an independent organisation promoting and checking on sustainably and environmentally friendly production. So big Kuddos are due here! That same visit also tells me that for this port cask finish, they’ve used a ‘premium Irish malt’ (probably from Midleton, might be from Cooley, but your guess is as good as mine) and 9 year old Irish grain whiskey.

Nose

Soft soapy-floral at 1st. In a good way. Let it brath a bit and I picked up honey and a white fruit sweetness, with melons, apricot and even some lychee. A soft and fresh sour note prevents things from becoming overly sweet. The port casks are playing hide & seek a bit and leave a shy, dessert like wine and cherry sweet note. Overall quite enjoyable.

Palate

Grainy, definitely more grainy! Spices and pepper, a bit hot even, with some oaky wood making for a soft bitter note and a light/medium body with a dry mouthfeel, which does become increasingly mouth coating over time. Perhaps I should have added water to let it open up a bit, as that was about al I got from this sample.

Finish

Medium long, oaky and dry.

On the nose, this was showing quite some promise, with a nice development and a good balance between sweet and sour notes. Therefore I feel it’s a bit of pity that there's little of that translating into the palate. A palate which is, in my opinion, a bit one-dimensional and all in all too simple and straightforward to really grab my attention and interest. I’m definitely not writing off Clonakilty on a one sample basis, especially as this is sourced whiskey, and I will revisit them in times to come as their ‘story’ ticks a lot of the boxes to make interesting whiskey. For now, I’ll leave it at close, but no cigar…

And whit that, Irish whiskey month is done and dusted. A wee family break is coming up, so I’ll see you in two weeks, when I’ll be taking a closer look at some oddball whiskies. Until then, slainte mhath!