A 1,000-year-old Irish oak tree, which collapsed in a storm, has been transformed into uncommon casks for a deliberate Irish whiskey.
The challenge has been collectively labored on by Boann Distillery, the specialist coopers at Kentucky Bourbon Barrel, and Swainstown Farm in County Meath.
The tree was knocked down throughout Storm Elin in December 2023 on Preston’s Property at Swainstown Farm.
Peter Cooney, export gross sales director at Boann Distillery, mentioned: “This oak stood at Preston’s Property for round 1,000 years and its story may simply have ended when it fell throughout Storm Elin. As a substitute, it has returned to Eire to start a brand new life as three terribly uncommon whiskey casks.”
American oak barrels that beforehand held Bourbon are mostly utilized in Irish whiskey manufacturing. The rarity of Irish oak comes attributable to there being comparatively little native oak appropriate for barrel manufacturing.
The challenge is claimed to be the primary time in additional than a century that full Irish oak whiskey casks have been coopered by Irish fingers on Irish soil.
The Preston household are descendants of the Preston’s of Drogheda in County Louth, who operated a whiskey bonding enterprise for nearly a century from 1886.
Arthur Preston, of Swainstown Farm, added: “These will turn out to be a number of the rarest Irish whiskey vessels ever made, created from native oak of extraordinary age and provenance by Irish coopers working in Eire.
“This tree was a part of the panorama at Swainstown for longer than any of us can comprehend. Whereas it was deeply saddening to see it fall, reworking it into whiskey casks creates a brand new connection between our household’s historical past, the land and the way forward for Preston’s whiskey.”
A piece of tree was despatched to the Vosges area of France, with the log cut up and transformed into formed staves along with the heads wanted for the casks.
The oak was then seasoned outside for round two years earlier than being returned to Eire at Kentucky Bourbon Barrel’s cooperage in Newbridge, the place it was formed and assembled into three 225-litre casks for Boann Distillery.
“Our workforce is consistently exploring new flavour potentialities,” mentioned Mark Fast, managing director of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Eire. “Working with native Irish oak of this age and provenance is a gigantic privilege. Each stave should be rigorously examined and formed earlier than the cask is raised, secured with hoops and ready to carry spirit.
“How we season, form, toast and assemble the oak will affect the best way the whiskey interacts with the wooden all through maturation.”
The matured whiskey stuffed into the casks was based mostly on a secret Preston’s classic mash invoice XI recipe from the late Nineteenth-century, uncovered via Boann’s Classic Mash Invoice programme, developed with whiskey historian Dr Fionnan O’Connor. The Preston’s maturing stock mash invoice mash accommodates 40% malted barley, 36% unmalted barley, 17% oats, 5% wheat and a couple of% rye.
The whiskey can be bottled and launched in 2027, hopefully as Boann Preston’s Single Pot Nonetheless Irish Whiskey. Nonetheless, this classification can be depending on the end result of the evaluate into the Irish whiskey product specification.
The general public session can be accomplished subsequent month.
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