Midleton, the distillery where popular Irish whiskey brands Jameson, Redbreast, and Powers are made, is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. To commemorate the occasion, it’s releasing Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Chapter Six, its oldest pot still whiskey to date which is composed of the literal last drops of spirit made at the old distillery. We were able to visit Midleton this week to get a first taste of this rare 50-year-old whiskey, and it’s fantastic.
Midleton is located in the town of the same name just outside of Cork, the second largest city in Ireland. The distillery’s history dates back to 1825, and while it has obviously changed quite a bit over the years, it has continued to make pot still and grain whiskey that has been released under a variety of different names. The original Old Midleton Distillery was home to the largest pot still in the world, a 31,618-gallon behemoth that you can still see when you visit. In 1966, just four distilleries remained in Ireland after the havoc wreaked by two world wars and Prohibition, and three of those consolidated at Midleton: John Jameson & Son, John Powers & Son, and Cork Distilleries Company (Bushmills in Northern Ireland was the fourth). And in 1975, the old distillery ceased operations and production moved to the New Midleton Distillery, where it remains to this day.
One of the key expressions produced at the distillery is Midleton Very Rare, an annual blend that changes with each release. In 2020, the distillery launched the Silent Distillery Collection, a limited-edition series made up of the very last whiskey produced at the old distillery that had been set aside for safekeeping. This month, the final chapter is being released, which contains the actual last drops of that whiskey. According to master distiller Kevin O’Gorman, this release is a blend of four ex-bourbon barrels containing single pot still whiskey that was distilled in 1973 (pot still whiskey is made from malted and unmalted barley, but O’Gorman says there was likely some oats in the mashbill as well).
O’Gorman knew he wanted to marry these four casks together, so he asked fifth-generation master cooper Ger Buckley to come up with a new barrel for this. “He made a bespoke cask from the heads and staves from the casks used for the previous five chapters,” O’Gorman told Robb Report. “So Chapter Six, in a small way, has liquid from the other five in it because the staves would have been pretty well soaked.” The whiskey sat in this cask for six months, but it was meant to allow the liquid to marry together, not to be reactive and actually have an influence on the flavor. Buckley presented this cask to a group of visiting journalists this week and got quite emotional when he pointed out that both his and his father’s cooper’s mark is on the barrel, a small branding in the wood that is proof of just how closely his family is tied to Midleton.
There are not many Irish whiskeys available that are this old, although Bushmills got pretty close when it released a 46-year-old single malt, the oldest to date in that category, about a month ago. O’Gorman credits Ireland’s climate and the types of barrels used to allowing a whiskey to mature for this long and not become an oaky, tannic bomb. “We don’t have extremes in temperature, be it day or night, summer or winter,” he said. “So it’s quite a gradual maturation, which suits old whiskeys like this. But I think a more important part is the cask it’s matured in. All of these were in refill casks, some of theme were third or fourth fill. That means you can allow the whiskey to remain vibrant and you don’t draw out too much wood.”
We were able to sample Silent Distillery Chapter Six this week at an event at the distillery, and it’s a pretty remarkable whiskey. At cask strength of 53 percent ABV, which is quite high after half a century in oak, there’s some bite to it. The nose leads off with notes of apple, honey, concord grape, and maple. The palate follows with prominent notes of juicy stone fruit, along with dark berries, lemon custard, caramel, raisin, pepper jelly, leather, and sweet pipe tobacco. While this is indeed the last whiskey from the old distillery, O’Gorman says that there will likely be new ultra-aged releases in some shape or form from the new distillery in the future, considering that it has been making whiskey for half a century now.
Of course, a whiskey this old and rare is going to have a pretty stunning presentation, especially one priced at $60,000 per bottle. The case was designed by John Galvin, a seasoned craftsman based in Glasgow who has worked with many other distilleries on high-end releases. He used wood from the five previous cabinets along with bird’s eye maple to construct the new cabinet, and the whiskey comes inside a Waterford crystal decanter. You can find the new Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Collection Chapter Six available from specialty retailers now, and you can find past MVR releases available to purchase from ReserveBar now.
Authors
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Jonah Flicker