Irish whiskey has done more than satiated our thirst, it has in fact changed the world. In this episode of stories and sips we look at the incredible connection between Irish whiskey and the invention of radio.

In this episode of Stories and Sips, you get two Irish people for the price of one as I'm joined by Jameson Brand Ambassador Lisa McGrath who shares the story of Jameson Black Barrel and leads us through a tasting of this wonderful whiskey.

In 1825, three Murphy brothers purchased an old woolen mills in Midleton in County Cork and converted it into a distillery on the banks of the Dungourney River…a distillery that over the past 200 years has evolved into one of the world’s greatest whiskey distilleries.

9 years later in 1834 and 70 miles away to the north west, construction was also underway in the village of Adare in Co. Limerick as the 2nd earl of Dunraven began converting an old Georgian house on the Maigue River into what has today become one of the world’s greatest manor houses and hotels - Adare Manor. In this episode of Stories and Sips I’ll share the story of how these two great houses - one a whiskey house and the other a house of hospitality have come together to produce something amazing.

In this episode of Stories & Sips we’re talking about dolphins, and distilleries. That can only mean one thing. We’re talking about one of the most westerly towns in Europe - the remote, the insane, the magical town of Dingle in County Kerry, or to the Irish speakers amongst you, An Daingean i gContae Chiarrai.

According to the Irish Whiskey Association, combined sales of Irish whiskey are growing at a rate of 250,000 bottles a week. This year will be the first year in over 100 years that Irish whiskey sales globally will top 10 million cases. 90 million liters of whiskey will flow down the throats of lucky drinkers around the world. That’s enough whiskey to…..well….to have a good time! In this episode we’ll explore the reasons behind this growth.

If you were a visitor to Ireland 60 years ago (which in itself would have been a rare thing) and you wanted a bottle of whiskey...if you had gone to the distillery to find it in a gift shop or for sale there, you’d have been laughed at. Not only was there no real tourism to Ireland at the time, there were certainly no gift shops in distilleries and though they might have produced the whiskey, they didn’t sell it to customers. In this episode I’m going to explain why.

A Jameson TV commercial a few years ago tells the tale of how John Jameson saved his precious whiskey from The Great Dublin Fire of 1789. In order to save his whiskey from the flames engulfing the city, he singlehandedly saves his precious liquid by breaking a dam, flooding Dublin and ensuring his whiskey didn’t go to waste. A fanciful tale, that is of course a work of fiction.

But it pales in comparison to the real fire of Dublin almost a hundred years later where it was the whiskey that did the damage and almost wiped out the city. We’re going to tell that tale in this episode.

It is a widely known truth that the best way to drink Irish whiskey is while sitting in a green field, in the shadow of a distillery, while fair maidens dance around you singing the haunting lyrics of Carrickfergus.

If you don’t have access to a green field, an Irish distillery or a host of fair maidens, but if you can at least get your hands on a drop of our lovely brown water, then this episode of Stories and Sips is for you.

Midleton, a small farming town in East Cork, a half hour’s drive from Cork City is the unlikely center of the world for Irish whiskey. Unlikely, maybe in terms of its size (population 12000) humility or the fact that it doesn’t have any airs of superiority, but not unlikely when you consider its location. Built on the Dungourney river a great fresh water source, and within 100 miles of all the barley it needs, it has the perfect location to distill the world’s most famous Irish whiskeys.

In fact 90% of the Irish whiskeys on the market are either completely distilled in this small town or use its grain whiskey in their blends. Brands you’ll be familiar with like Jameson, Powers, Paddy, Redbreast, Green Spot, Yellow Spot, Tullamore Dew are all born in Midleton. In this episode I share the history of the Midleton distillery and its whiskeys.

What I love about Irish whiskey is that it is far more than the taste, the flavor, the bottle or the label. With many Irish whiskeys you are sipping the product of hundreds of years of history. Hundreds of years of stories. Stories of growth, stories of acquisition, of mergers, of big wins and even bigger losses, of characters unique to Ireland. Characters that have shaped not just their businesses but the industry and indeed Ireland itself.

One such man is forever immortalized on every bottle of whiskey that bears the word Tullamore. Many Americans I speak to about whiskey have assumed that the DEW in tullamore refers to the moisture found on the grass on the hills of Ireland as dawn breaks, but closer inspection of the bottle, reveals DEW to be an acronym, an acronym for the man that made Tullamore famous. His name was Daniel E Williams and he was one of the characters that changed the Irish whiskey industry forever.