The Pearse 5 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey

Tasting notes:
The nose on this dram presents with green pepper soaked in witch-hazel. That is to say, it’s got a funky youthiness. Not funky as in “Sherry cask funk,” but rather funky as in “…music white boy.” But there’s also more than just that: we also got graham crackers smoked boldly in a nut- and egg-free facility.  

The mouth offers river stones, savoriness, molasses, moss, minnows, and muddy eddies on the side of a fast-moving stream. It’s a rich, cool broth of primordial goodness. This is what I wish a Tofurky® could taste like. In other words, it tastes like it contains serious amounts of iron. Perhaps it’s the 46% abv, perhaps it’s the fact that it’s distilled in the former St. James Church and some of the old consecrated host found its way into the production process.

The finish is longer, and more mineralic: almost as if tetrahedrons are forming on the palate in the wake of this dram like Sea Monkees don’t form in the wake of…well…anything. Soon, something much more intricate comes into view: 30 campfire scorched marshmallow skins pulled off the soft, burly, half-melted inner bodies and compressed, via a Damascus steel folding process, into a delicious dessert. It’s either that, or mesquite smoked celery sticks…or whatever it is that Willy Wonka might put in between those two on the silver platter he’d served such things on.

 
 

Rating:
On the scale of green things that don’t really taste all that green–

The Pearse 5 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey is the avocado—The richness, the fat, the spice-absorbing qualities, and the health benefits all conspire to make many things much better than they’d be without it, but it never really tastes green.

   

   

                                                                        –Stephen

   

   

–Our thanks to Pearse Lyons and Engelstad Spirits for the sample!