If you’ve ever been to a dive bar, you’ve likely enjoyed a shot of Jameson alongside your Miller High Life—after all, the Champagne of Beers goes quite well with the best-selling Irish whiskey in the world. But there are some elevated versions of this ubiquitous and beloved brand, and whiskey commerce website the Whiskey Exchange now has one that you can only find there: Jameson 23 Year Old, its oldest age statement expression.
According to the Whisky Exchange, this is indeed the oldest Jameson age statement to date that was specifically bottled by the distillery. The distillery in question is Midleton located just outside of Cork, where other brands like Redbreast, Powers, Green Spot, and Midleton Very Rare are also produced (we covered the last chapter in the Silent Distillery recently, the oldest pot still whiskey it has ever released). Jameson surpasses all of these other brands in terms of sales by a wide margin, however, but that’s mostly based on the popularity of the core non-age statement blend. Like that expression, Jameson 23 is also a combination of pot still and grain whiskey. As a reminder, pot still means the whiskey is made from both malted and unmalted barley (a small percentage of other grains can be included) and distilled on a pot still, while Irish grain whiskey is made from a mashbill of barley and another grain (often corn) that is distilled on a column still.
For Jameson 23, the pot still whiskey consists of all three styles that are produced at Midleton—light, medium, and heavy—and it comprises the majority of the blend. The whiskey was aged in a combination of barrels, including first-fill and refill bourbon barrels and first-fill Oloroso sherry butts. A selection of casks were blended together and then re-vatted into first-fill bourbon barrels in 2018 and allowed to mature for an additional five years before being bottled in 2023. The whiskey is non-chill filtered and clocks in at 55.1 percent ABV. We did not get to sample it yet, but the official tasting notes include poached pears, creamy toffee, pepper spice, sun-dried raisins, honeyed cashews, and vanilla, with a balanced sherry profile.
Jameson 23 Year Old Small Batch is an exclusive Whisky Exchange release (SRP £325, about $370), and you can purchase it here now. There are a few other scotch whisky exclusives from the Signatory Fortified Cask Series that are available as well: Linkwood single malt aged for 16 years, a 17-year-old Clynelish, and a 21-year-old from Mortlach.
Authors
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Jonah Flicker