Jameson Irish Whiskey

Word on the street is that Irish is currently going through a new renaissance period, but did it ever go away?

I pose this question solely due to one bottle which can be spotted on 99.9% of bar shelves, waiting to be slammed as a shot or mixed in with ginger ale. Jameson. I know it and I assume you have either tried it or at the very least know the name.

However not a bottle that is often slowly sipped and savoured, I am going to see if this Whiskey is neat, neat.

Experience

This bottle really got me thinking: Should chill-filtering be taken into account in the Experience? While the visual cloudy element which is removed via chill-filtering would certainly fall into the same category as branding and being a fan of the natural mist would lead me to think the answer to my question is yes. However, I have only had one bottled whisky go cloudy in my experience and most people say the difference is in the taste. Therefore I have decided chill-filtering will have no effect on the Experience score, not that I am sure I really took it into account before though.

Anyway, sidetracked. It does have artificial colouring (which does affect the score negatively due to it is always interesting seeing the natural spirit colour) which is expected for consistency in this mass-produced blend.

The branding is classic even may go as far as saying it is iconic. Maybe more due to constantly seeing a bottle than brilliant branding but it certainly has its place.

Nose

To me, this is what I feel to be “standard Irish” in terms of the nose. There are the nice tropical fruits at the front tied in with sweet caramels. Like with the Peaky Blinders Irish Whiskey there is quite a strong tang of metal kicking around, almost like drinking whiskey that has been left in a hip flask too long.

A little bit of creamy vanilla ice cream lingering yet sadly all the elements are subdued by the sharper grain notes. Overall quite lacking and mild throughout.

Taste

From slowly sipping and savouring you instantly notice just how thin this whisky is, which may be a factor of the chill filtering but I am not going down that rabbit hole.

Quite brittle and sharp like jagged Mr Tom bar stabbing your gums. When tasting this with Dave and Nick from the Whisky and Things Podcast, the note of cheap tinned fruit cocktail in syrup poured over refrozen 89p vanilla ice cream struck me with every sip of this. While not a bad taste it is lacking in flavour and quite dull.

Value for Money

This is a Whiskey that fully deserves the budget label. The lowest I have seen a 70cl bottle is £12 but can be up to £20, so I have based it on the commonly found £15 in the UK. Now that is far from a bad price if your goal is to sip it straight or chuck it in as a mixer and a bottle that is worth having on any shelf.