‘Liquid gold’: Midleton release recalls Irish whiskey’s lost age
Fifty years after one of the most seismic shifts in the long history of Irish whiskey, the last drops from the Old Midleton Distillery in County Cork have been released, for a cool £55,000 a bottle. Richard Woodard finds out more. The post ‘Liquid gold’: Midleton release recalls Irish whiskey’s lost age appeared first on The Drinks Business.
Fifty years after one of the most seismic shifts in the long history of Irish whiskey, the last drops from the Old Midleton Distillery in County Cork have been released, for a cool £55,000 a bottle. Richard Woodard finds out more.
There’s an unmistakable catch of emotion in master cooper Ger Buckley’s voice as he tells the story of his part in the release of Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Collection Chapter Six, a single pot still expression that concludes what is billed as the rarest and oldest Irish whiskey collection in the world.
For the final release – a 50-year-old whiskey priced at £55,000 a bottle – a special cask was conceived, combining staves from each of the series’ five previous chapters. On the cask used for Chapter Five, a 49-year-old blend of pot still and grain, was inscribed a small number 1 – the ‘cooper’s mark’ used both by Buckley and by his father Dominic, who retired in 1982.
“That was very emotional,” says Ger. “To work on a cask that my father had worked on…” He takes a breath. “I didn’t really feel any pressure when I was asked to make the cask. But I did when I found out about the liquid that was going inside it.”
Chapter Six is more than just a very old Irish whiskey, and a tribute to this year’s bicentenary of distilling at Midleton; it’s the liquid embodiment of a lost age in the island’s distilling history – and a reminder of very different times.
Irish whiskey is one of the biggest success stories of the modern drinks industry, with Irish Distillers’ Midleton-produced Jameson – which sold over 6m nine-litre cases in the second half of 2024 – spearheading a remarkable renaissance. Remarkable because, when the spirit for Chapter Six ran off the stills in the mid-1970s, Irish whiskey was on its knees.
The industry had been saved from destruction in 1966, when Irish Distillers was formed, banding together the few distilleries that remained after decades of decline prompted by a toxic mix of bad luck, geopolitcs, mismanagement and being outgunned by Scotch.
The Old Midleton Distillery – today a museum – harks back to that age. An abandoned woollen mill taken over in 1825 by the Murphy brothers, who were merchant entrepreneurs from nearby Cork, it surfed the Victorian golden age for Irish whiskey, when the drink was as celebrated as Champagne or Cognac. The world’s largest pot still – a beast that could hold 31,618 gallons of liquid, installed in 1854 – encapsulated that era, and this was the still in which, 120 years later, the Chapter Six whiskey was distilled.
But by 1975, as Midleton marked its 150th anniversary, change was needed. Irish Distillers built an entirely new distillery on the site, equipped for the modern age. The workers simply knocked off at the old distillery one Friday afternoon – and clocked on at the new plant on the Monday morning.
That switch, along with the creation of Irish Distillers, saved Irish whiskey, laying the foundations that culminated in this release of this £55,000 Irish whiskey, bottled in a mouth-blown crystal decanter from the House of Waterford, and encased in a cabinet designed by master craftsman John Galvin that combines six rare woods – five from the previous Silent Distillery releases, plus a blue bird’s eye maple for the sixth.
And the whisky itself? Beyond the romance of the back-story of Ger Buckley and the successive master distillers who have overseen its maturation, from Max Crockett to his son Barry, then Brian Nation and finally Kevin O’Gorman, it is – literally – a taste of a bygone age.
“We had a collection of casks left over from the mid-1970s, from Max Crockett and the old distillery,” says O’Gorman. “They were kept in Warehouses A2 and A3, and – when I joined the company in 1998 – I was told that they’re liquid gold from the old distillery.”
They made whiskey differently then. Locally-grown, unmalted and malted barley was used, with a small proportion of oats to aid filtration. The fundamental difference was the size of the pot still – those at the new plant are half the size – but the stills back then were direct-fired (heated by burning anthracite), rather than using steam, and the condensers were worm tubs, rather than shell-and-tube. Valves were operated manually, with no computer in sight.
What does all of that mean in flavour terms? “Between the technology and the type of still, the direct fire, the condensers… it’s all changed,” says O’Gorman. “The reflux would have been different, the boiling rate – you would be getting more of the heavy compounds. You end up with a heavier, more aromatic, more oily distillate.”
This rich, characterful spirit has been mellowed over decades by maturation in refill ex-Bourbon oak – casks that would have been used two or three times previously. This was partly a consequence of the financially straitened times – new casks were and are expensive – and partly a conscious decision by Max and Barry Crockett to use neutral oak to allow a slow, gentle infusion of the flavours.
In the case of Chapter Six, there were four casks, some of them pretty low on liquid after five decades, which were then combined in Ger Buckley’s bespoke cask. “We gave it six months to marry – it was really a marrying cask,” says O’Gorman. “It allowed those four whiskeys to mingle and come together.”
Is this really the last release from the old distillery? No more casks sitting in a corner somewhere? “There’s no more,” insists O’Gorman. “That was one of the fundamentals when we started work on this in 2018. If it’s gone, it’s gone. The only whiskey left is the quality reference samples in the lab.”
Two centuries after Irish whiskey first came to Midleton, and 50 years since the move that safeguarded the industry, Irish Distillers owner Pernod Ricard is building a €250 million, carbon-neutral distillery on land adjacent to the current plant that could almost double Midleton’s production.
The ambitious project comes at a difficult time for the industry – Midleton has paused production this spring amid challenging market conditions and the on-off tariff threat from President Trump – but the longer-term trajectory of Irish whiskey remains overwhelmingly positive.
It’s all a far cry from the dark days of the post-war era that led up to the closure of the old Midleton plant in 1975. What does O’Gorman think people back then would have made of the release of a 50-year-old whiskey priced at £55,000 a bottle?
“No way,” he shakes his head. “They just couldn’t have imagined this – not at all. And I couldn’t have dreamt that I would have the honour of this either – it’s so special for me as well.”
Midleton Silent Distillery Chapter Six
(€60,000/£55,000/US$60,000 per bottle; available from specialist retailers in the UK, Ireland and the US; bottled at 53% ABV)
Nose: Immediate hit of baking spices, antique furniture, dark honey and blackberry, black cherry and dark chocolate. Damp warehouse earth, nutmeg and a little orange zest.
Palate: A textural whiskey – velvety, oily, broad and fat in the mouth – combining juicy cassis, tangy rancio notes, stewed peaches in syrup, then a herbal touch and a little biscuity oak. The distillate heaviness has mellowed, and the finish – bringing hints of coffee grinder and spice rack – is endless.
But by 1975, as Midleton marked its 150th anniversary, change was needed. Irish Distillers built an entirely new distillery on the site, equipped for the modern age. The workers simply knocked off at the old distillery one Friday afternoon – and clocked on at the new plant on the Monday morning.
That switch, along with the creation of Irish Distillers, saved Irish whiskey, laying the foundations that culminated in this release of this £55,000 Irish whiskey, bottled in a mouth-blown crystal decanter from the House of Waterford, and encased in a cabinet designed by master craftsman John Galvin that combines six rare woods – five from the previous Silent Distillery releases, plus a blue bird’s eye maple for the sixth.
And the whisky itself? Beyond the romance of the back-story of Ger Buckley and the successive master distillers who have overseen its maturation, from Max Crockett to his son Barry, then Brian Nation and finally Kevin O’Gorman, it is – literally – a taste of a bygone age.
“We had a collection of casks left over from the mid-1970s, from Max Crockett and the old distillery,” says O’Gorman. “They were kept in Warehouses A2 and A3, and – when I joined the company in 1998 – I was told that they’re liquid gold from the old distillery.”
They made whiskey differently then. Locally-grown, unmalted and malted barley was used, with a small proportion of oats to aid filtration. The fundamental difference was the size of the pot still – those at the new plant are half the size – but the stills back then were direct-fired (heated by burning anthracite), rather than using steam, and the condensers were worm tubs, rather than shell-and-tube. Valves were operated manually, with no computer in sight.
What does all of that mean in flavour terms? “Between the technology and the type of still, the direct fire, the condensers… it’s all changed,” says O’Gorman. “The reflux would have been different, the boiling rate – you would be getting more of the heavy compounds. You end up with a heavier, more aromatic, more oily distillate.”
This rich, characterful spirit has been mellowed over decades by maturation in refill ex-Bourbon oak – casks that would have been used two or three times previously. This was partly a consequence of the financially straitened times – new casks were and are expensive – and partly a conscious decision by Max and Barry Crockett to use neutral oak to allow a slow, gentle infusion of the flavours.
In the case of Chapter Six, there were four casks, some of them pretty low on liquid after five decades, which were then combined in Ger Buckley’s bespoke cask. “We gave it six months to marry – it was really a marrying cask,” says O’Gorman. “It allowed those four whiskeys to mingle and come together.”
Is this really the last release from the old distillery? No more casks sitting in a corner somewhere? “There’s no more,” insists O’Gorman. “That was one of the fundamentals when we started work on this in 2018. If it’s gone, it’s gone. The only whiskey left is the quality reference samples in the lab.”
Two centuries after Irish whiskey first came to Midleton, and 50 years since the move that safeguarded the industry, Irish Distillers owner Pernod Ricard is building a €250 million, carbon-neutral distillery on land adjacent to the current plant that could almost double Midleton’s production.
The ambitious project comes at a difficult time for the industry – Midleton has paused production this spring amid challenging market conditions and the on-off tariff threat from President Trump – but the longer-term trajectory of Irish whiskey remains overwhelmingly positive.
It’s all a far cry from the dark days of the post-war era that led up to the closure of the old Midleton plant in 1975. What does O’Gorman think people back then would have made of the release of a 50-year-old whiskey priced at £55,000 a bottle?
“No way,” he shakes his head. “They just couldn’t have imagined this – not at all. And I couldn’t have dreamt that I would have the honour of this either – it’s so special for me as well.”
Midleton Silent Distillery Chapter Six
(€60,000/£55,000/US$60,000 per bottle; available from specialist retailers in the UK, Ireland and the US; bottled at 53% ABV)
Nose: Immediate hit of baking spices, antique furniture, dark honey and blackberry, black cherry and dark chocolate. Damp warehouse earth, nutmeg and a little orange zest.
Palate: A textural whiskey – velvety, oily, broad and fat in the mouth – combining juicy cassis, tangy rancio notes, stewed peaches in syrup, then a herbal touch and a little biscuity oak. The distillate heaviness has mellowed, and the finish – bringing hints of coffee grinder and spice rack – is endless. 
