Jameson and Ireland's Whiskey Heritage

John Jameson was a Scotsman. He arrived in Dublin in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, married into the Haig family of Scottish distillers, and in 1780 took over a small distillery on Bow Street, a short walk from the River Liffey. Under his direction and that of his sons and grandsons, the Bow Street Distillery grew into one of the largest producers of whiskey in the world.

This was, at the time, an unremarkable achievement in a remarkable industry. Dublin in the nineteenth century was the world capital of whiskey. Its four great distilleries — Jameson, Powers, Roe and Williams — between them produced more whiskey than the whole of Scotland, and Irish whiskey was the dominant style in every major market. The smooth, triple-distilled character of the Dublin houses set the standard by which whiskey was judged.

Then, in the space of two generations, almost everything was lost. The rise of blended Scotch, the introduction of the column still (which the Dublin distillers largely refused to adopt), the disruption of the First World War, the trade war between the newly independent Irish Free State and the United Kingdom, and the closing of the American market by Prohibition in 1920 combined to devastate the industry. By the middle of the twentieth century, Irish whiskey production had collapsed. Distilleries closed one after another, and by the 1970s only a handful remained in operation.

In 1900, Ireland ruled the world of whiskey. Fifty years later, the industry had almost vanished.

Jameson survived. In 1966 the remaining Irish distillers — Jameson, Powers and Cork Distilleries Company — merged to form Irish Distillers, and in 1975 they consolidated production at a new distillery at Midleton in County Cork. The original Bow Street site in Dublin ceased production and was preserved as a heritage centre.

The Midleton Distillery is now one of the most versatile and technically sophisticated distilleries in the world, producing several distinct Irish whiskey brands. Jameson itself is a blended Irish whiskey, combining pot still whiskey (a uniquely Irish style using both malted and unmalted barley) with grain whiskey, triple distilled and matured in a combination of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks.

The revival of Irish whiskey from the 1980s onwards has been one of the most remarkable stories in the modern spirits world. Jameson has led that revival internationally, and Irish whiskey is once again a significant global category, with dozens of new distilleries now operating across the island.

The Jameson crest carries the motto Sine Metu — 'Without Fear.' It is a phrase drawn from the coat of arms granted to the Jameson family in the seventeenth century, and one that seems, in retrospect, remarkably well chosen for a house that outlasted the near-extinction of its industry.