Enjoy a Spot of Mitchell's on St Paddy's Day

One of my favorite whiskies to enjoy anytime (but especially on St Paddy's Day) is Green Spot by Mitchell & Sons of Dublin. This is a Single Pot Distilled Irish Whiskey, so the flavors are a bit more bold and round than your mass-market whiskies, which are often triple distilled in large columns to accommodate their commercial production sizes.

This is a sipping whiskey, typically made from a blend of 7 to 10 year old spirits. It is not so much intended as a shooter; I like to enjoy with a couple of ice-cubes in an Old Fashioned glass. The ice will slowly chill and mix, softening the alcohol, but also allowing the subtle wood and sherry-cask flavors and aromas to come forward.

Green Spot was originally produced exclusively for the Mitchell family. They were traders in Dublin in the early 1800s, and some of what they dealt with included the trade of whiskey and wine. Much of the wine being traded at the time was port and sherry, and almost all of that was traded exclusively in barrel. This meant there were a lot of barrels available to be filled and used for aging whiskey or for trade going outbound. By selecting certain barrels the practice of finishing the whiskey with a particular flavor meant that you could achieve a style. Since sherry barrels have a lot of flavor that will work well with pot stilled whiskey, these barrels have been favored for many years. The Green Spot, while aged in new and ex-Bourbon barrels, gets its power in part from being finished in ex-Sherry casks.

Four generations later, the company is still in the wine and spirits business, under the stewardship of Jonathan Mitchell and his son Robert. This is a complex and delicious Irish whiskey, but one that is still generally widely available - if you know the right store. I recommend that if you need a wee bit of whiskey tonight, maybe while watching the movie above, then this could be a great choice in your glass. As always, though, please keep your consumption to a reasonable and moderate level.

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