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PREMIER BARREL
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Returning to the "good old days" of Victorian Music Hall for it's inspiration, our new ceramic decanter goes by the name of PREMIER BARREL, and replicates Scotch Whisky Decanters from the late 1800's. Actually, it also looks like an old fashioned bed-pig, designed to keep you warm on cold winter nights – a job its Malt Selection can still do for you!
Using the terminology of the Music Hall Impresarios who were frequently fond of flashy, flamboyant, flippant and formidable verbosity, we have followed the same formula - suggesting that the label had been written with an old feather quill pen at a high desk, by a lawyers’ clerk – sorry for the ink splatters!
Designed initially for the gift market, it self evidently appeals to the Scotch Malt purist as well. All bottlings are from single casks "selected single-mindedly and spiritually, yet soberly, in salutary solemnity, whilst sourcing salubrious suitability of the spell-binding spirit - satisfactorily sanctifying a sympathetic susceptibility to serenity from this spectacularly sensuous speciality", as we like to say (on the label).

Douglas Laing (http://www.douglaslaing.com/)

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Peated whiskey: on the rise in Ireland
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In 1661 heavy taxes were imposed on all whiskey made in Ireland, which led to an increase in the number of illicit distillers throughout the country. These distillers took to the bogs, glens and hills of Ireland to produce a whiskey that generated much needed money for its makers.
Connemara was a prime business location for these new entrepreneurs. However, the illicit distillers in the region had one big problem, which was the drying of the malt. It was common that sacks of grain were left to dry in different places throughout his home so peat was then used in aiding the quick drying of the malt. Any whiskey produced in Ireland with a peaty aroma and taste was called "poteen flavoured" as it was not left to mature for lengthy periods.
In the rural wilds of the West of Ireland, Connemara in particular, there was ample evidence of illicit distilling. A nineteenth-century observer Arthur Barnard said of the area that "No men understood better the localities that could turn out good spirit, and this fact may be seen to this day when we find many of the oldest distilleries existing upon sites which have been well-known to have been chosen by smugglers of old as places where the purest mountain streams, flowing over moss and peat could be used to distil and produce spirits of the finest description."
And the fall….
As many of the distilleries in Ireland were located alongside a canal, the transport of coal to the distilleries became far easier and cheaper. Over time peat was then substituted with coal in the distilling process. This temporarily killed the tradition of peated whiskeys. Cooley Distillery has resurrected this process and recreated the Connemara Peated Single Malt Irish Whiskey to revive this lost tradition.

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Connemara Whiskey (http://www.connemarawhiskey.com)