Kevin O’Gorman says his colleagues joke about how he likely won’t be around to see the results of his work. “I suppose that is sobering,” says O’Gorman, who’s the master distiller at the Midleton Distillery, just east of Cork in Eire. His latest project only underscores that he’s in a business that operates on long timelines. Midleton recently released Chapter Six of its Very Rare Silent Distillery Collection (Chapter One was released five years ago). They’re the results of barrels first set aside 50 years ago by the master distiller of the time.
“I have certainly felt the weight of history a bit,” he adds. Indeed, Chapter Six is, Midleton argues, the oldest and rarest Irish whiskey ever — or at least a final part of the oldest and rarest Irish whiskey collection, which is a big claim. First, some backstory.
The Old Midleton Distillery (as it’s referred to these days) was established in 1825, which means this year it’s celebrating its 200th anniversary. That building was closed in 1975 when a new distillery, responsible for several major Irish whiskey brands (including Jameson), was built on an adjacent site. Around that time, the decision was made to keep back a few barrels of the old distillery’s output.
And there they sat in a warehouse. “I was aware of these when I joined the company in 1998,” O’Gorman says, nodding to what would become their near-mythic status in Irish whiskey lore. “I was always told they were special, even if there was nothing special in mind with regards to what to actually do with them.”
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The category’s premiumization is high cost, high rewardThat is, until the 50th anniversary of the closure of the old site, complete with its 145-liter pot still, was in sight. Then the decision was made to release that whiskey as a series before evaporation risked taking the lot. The very last of it was matured in ex-bourbon American oak barrels and later decanted into a bespoke cask crafted using the wood from the previous five Silent Distillery releases, bringing what O’Gorman describes as “no addition and no subtraction but a marriage, a mingling [of flavors].”
“[This whiskey] is of historic importance,” O’Gorman says. “Chapter Six is the very last liquid from the old distillery, a distillery that will never open again, and I think that makes the liquid truly special. We haven’t held any back. But I do also think the whiskey itself is truly outstanding, and how it’s been looked after for so long across generations has been critical to that. [None of the chapters were] just left in a barrel. They required sustained attention over many years.”
Now comes the kicker: Only 225 bottles of Chapter Six were released, each priced at $60,000. The liquid arrives in a decanter handmade by famed Irish crystal glassmakers Waterford, housed in a gold-trimmed wooden cabinet by master craftsman John Galvin. He used not only those woods employed for the packaging of Chapters One to Five but also added birdseye maple, a naturally patterned wood so rare it accounts for just 0.1% of all maple. In short, buyers are left to decide how much of that $60,000 is accounted for by the actual whiskey, with its standout dark fruits, earthiness, tobacco spice and surprising vibrancy, given just how old it is.
Might Chapter Six prove in some way totemic of Irish whiskey’s revival during the last 50 years? While Irish whiskey was the biggest-selling whiskey in the world in the late 1800s, a mix of changing tastes and geo-politics — a war of independence, a World War, Prohibition and a trade war — meant that by the early 1960s, only some five Irish whiskey distilleries remained open. It was the critical founding of Irish Distillers by Jameson, Murphy’s and Powers in 1966 that rescued the situation, even if it’s only been during the last two decades that regulations have seen Irish whiskey officially recognized by geography and single pot still making (for which Irish whisky was historically famous) was revived. In the late ’80s, sales were less than 500,000 cases a year. Now it’s more than 11 million.
O’Gorman concedes it’s likely that this fantastic Midleton package will be bought-up by high-rolling collectors and not much of the whiskey itself is likely to be drunk. This is why Midleton has, since Chapter Two’s release onwards, also thrown in a 50ml sample so buyers can at least have a taste without having to open their pricey bottle. “To see people enjoy a 50-year-old whiskey is something special,” he says. “I would like people to open their bottle and drink it, of course.”
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