Irish whiskey connoisseurs

Are you supposed to do shots of good Irish whiskey? Isn't that wasteful?

Yeah, shooting whiskey is sad. One of my favorite mid-priced Irish whiskeys is Tullamore Dew. Another workaday one is Jameson. But I don't know what would be considered well-Irish.

Bartender!

Ha! I love whiskey. It's my drink of choice. No, I meant that good Irish whiskey is too fine to toss down the gullet without tasting it. In fact, shooting any liquor is going to make identification tricky.

Will your characters be sipping or actually shooting?

sdevonh said:

Well, only one of them would be "good". And the free one (if won) could be savored. I suppose my past drinking habits are coming to light in this. I could chug a bottle of Dom back in the day.

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It just seemed sort of contradictory, though I don't know your character, so it may be set up in a way that makes sense.

Like, a bartender who cares about whiskey, and sets up a thing to see if patrons could identify good whiskey, wouldn't seem to encourage shooting good whiskey. Also, as Perks notes, it'd seem to make it like impossibly hard to identify. Also also, that's four shots in a row, which make it seem like not a bar stocks a lot of good whiskey, if you see what I mean. Most bars that encourage slamming a lot of shots in a row tend to be the 'beer and Jack' kind of bars, not ones with a full back, in my experience.

And as much as I like whiskey, and as many varieties as I've enjoyed, and as often as I have done so, I'm almost positive I couldn't identify them by taste. If they are only to pick the purebred out of the workhorse whiskey, that might be a believable game.

ETA - and maybe just a teeny sip poured of each, rather than a full shot. Three shots in a row will probably make the fourth one being a "good one" moot.

And are the patrons paying for the initial 3 shots?

Can't see this game working in any Irish bar I've been in.

Shooting any good Irish is enough that one should be shot for doing it. All of the good Irish whiskeys are "premium", and there aren't all that many makers there, and all of the large distilleries are owned by foreigners. There are few small, Irish owned distilleries, but I have never had their products, because so little is made.

I would suggest that you look up Irish distilleries and decide which one you want to be premium. You might ask which one was made in an Irish owned distillery.

Perks said:

Yeah, shooting whiskey is sad.

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Agreed. Whiskey doesn't belong in shots and using a top-shelf whiskey is just blasphemous. Good whiskey should be celebrated, not chugged.

I'm mostly a Scotch girl, but Ireland rules around these parts, so some of the local establishments have a good selection of Irish whiskeys. The workaday brands (Jameson, Tullamore Dew, Bushmills) also put out very decent single malts for the premium crowd. Then you've got Connemara, Green Spot or Redbreast. I had the 21 year old at my dad's birthday. It was delicious. (If someone were to do shots with that, he'd deserve to be hit over the head with a lesser bottle.)

I second Redbreast for the premium whiskey.
Paddy for the workaday whiskey

Oh hell. Now I want whiskey.

sdevonh said:

Okay, let me backtrack... So this bartender, he's obsessed with Oscar Wilde and has named this signature offering of his after good old Oscar. It's supposed to be a contradiction, because Wilde was so contradictory, himself:"A man can be happy with any woman so long as he does not love her" and things of that sort.
Also, I couldn't think of any signature cocktail in an Irish pub that didn't involve something cheesy like Bailey's or Midori. I frequented an Irish pub for years that served a shot called "Leprechaun's Piss" that was Midori and God knows what else.
So that being said, maybe I should change my question.
If you ordered an "Oscar Wilde" in an Irish Pub in South Florida, what would you expect to be served?

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Scotch. Neat.

I don't think Wilde is so contradictory but that'd be as contradictory as an Oscar Wilde cocktail could get, I'd think?

Did somebody mention Paddy?

I'd love to go back to Ireland for a holiday.

sdevonh said:

If you ordered an "Oscar Wilde" in an Irish Pub in South Florida, what would you expect to be served?

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Pint of Guinness with an whiskey chaser.

Hi
I am a whiskey drinker , and it would be easy to tell the good from the bad The best irish whiskey is Midleton 25 year old pure pot. Made in cork and is possible the best whisky in the world.
Most distillers make a range of whiskeys . Jameson, also from cork, offer a 18 year old whisky that has been stored in old wooden casks that is a long way from the whiskeys you will find in you local supermarket . The problem with the difrent extrems is a bottle of Midleton is worth about £1000 . But a nice bottle of supermarket Jamsons is about £15

cornflake said:

Are you supposed to do shots of good Irish whiskey? Isn't that wasteful?

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Not just wasteful, it's downright scandelous!

mirandashell said:

And are the patrons paying for the initial 3 shots?

Can't see this game working in any Irish bar I've been in.

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Hell no. Because we'd just see it as getting a quarter of your drinks for free.

sdevonh said:

Okay, let me backtrack... So this bartender, he's obsessed with Oscar Wilde and has named this signature offering of his after good old Oscar. It's supposed to be a contradiction, because Wilde was so contradictory, himself:"A man can be happy with any woman so long as he does not love her" and things of that sort.
Also, I couldn't think of any signature cocktail in an Irish pub that didn't involve something cheesy like Bailey's or Midori. I frequented an Irish pub for years that served a shot called "Leprechaun's Piss" that was Midori and God knows what else.

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This is why only Irish people should legally be allowed to own or work in Irish pubs. We do not have cocktails. *shudders* if you want a cocktail you go to a wine bar and what those heathens do there with alcohol has nothing whatsoever in common with what happens in a pub.

mirandashell
Quote:
Originally Posted by sdevonh View Post

If you ordered an "Oscar Wilde" in an Irish Pub in South Florida, what would you expect to be served?
Pint of Guinness with an whiskey chaser.

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That's called a car bomb and is about as close to a cocktail as you are likely to get in an Irish pub.


If you are looking for a decent Irish whisky you can't go wrong with Bushmills - they make a rather large selection including everyday whisky and premium whiskies. They are the oldest licenced distillery in the world and are on the North Coast. They do a great tour of the place which is well worth a look. I know when I did bar work bushmills was very popular. Their 21 year old bottle retails for about £140 (about $220).

Now, the issue you would have here is that a shot of cheap ass whisky is about £3 (in my local anyway) so those three shots would still cost less than a single shot of the premium brand, which means that the pub would lose money on every game - because any whisky drinker will be able to tell the difference.

http://www.bushmills.com/

Thanks to this thread, I just put Irish Whiskey on my grocery list for Thanksgiving.

Thanks to this thread, I remembered the bottle of 12-year-old Redbreast I bought to celebrate the first snowstorm of this winter - and the forecast is for snow tomorrow night!