Powers John’s Lane 12yo
Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey | 46% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A flavourful, well-balanced, easy drinker
Irish Whiskey Lacks Transparency
This is the first Irish whiskey I have purchased in several years. Here’s why.
Years ago, my introductions were the standard Green Spot and Redbreast 12yo. The first time I tried either was during a trip to Dublin. I travelled over with a friend to spend a couple of days at the Punchestown Horse Racing Festival and we stayed in an area of the city called Ballsbridge.
I remember it being a more upmarket and affluent part of the city than we were expecting, considering the reasonable price of our hotel. Our room even had a sauna in one corner, but being two young lads sharing a room neither of us fancied using it. It also had a coffee machine complete with those colourful little pods George Clooney advertises extensively, which I also didn’t use - for fear it would be some sort of chargeable mini-bar situation and each missing pod would cost me an extortionate amount.
One evening, after a day at the races, we visited a nearby bar. I was a fairly casual and sporadic whisky drinker back then and the type of person who would rarely stray beyond £30 for a bottle. Having not won my fortune betting on the horses; I was looking at the cheaper end of what was on the blackboard at the end of the bar. Okay, not the cheapest, but perhaps the next cheapest. A bit like buying the second cheapest bottle on a wine list to try to save face. Green Spot and Redbreast 12yo were the obvious choices and, having enjoyed them both, I bought a bottle of each shortly after arriving back in the UK.
Once I started pursuing my whisky interest further, the whiskies at 40% ABV became largely discarded. I’m not saying 40% equals bad, but 46%+ and non-chill filtered is what we know helps carry more flavour and texture in a whisky. Looking around online retailers, I notice Green Spot is now close to £50 a bottle and Redbreast 12 has gone above that figure, which doesn’t represent great value when I look at the selection of Scotch I have access to. I fear, these days, they might not quite hit the mark any more.
It’ll be no surprise to many that one of the reasons I haven’t progressed to the higher ABV Irish whiskies, like I have with whisky from Scotland and other nations, is price. But the main issue I have with Irish whiskies, which many of you will have read about over the years, is that currently operating distilleries are legally able to bottle Irish whiskey under their own distillery brand without any clear indication that it was in fact distilled at that distillery. It could easily have been elsewhere - usually at big operations such as Midleton, Cooley and Great Northern.
This is even more of a problem with newer distilleries which have used sourced liquid while they wait for their own whiskey to reach maturity. In some cases they do say the liquid is sourced, but they are labelling it under their own distillery name, which means you have to be on the ball to realise this. In other cases it is impossible to tell that it wasn’t actually distilled at the distillery whose name is on the label.
I am struggling to find a single reliable source for the number of Irish whiskey distilleries in operation today, with figures ranging from somewhere in the fifties right up to eighty plus, but less than twenty years ago the figure was as low as four; so it’s clear Irish whiskey has been going through something of a renaissance and has a proliferation of these newer distilleries.
Teeling is one of the more high-profile examples of this practice of bottling sourced liquid under their own label. They have been operating since 2015 and have used sourced whiskey for their early releases, including a number of non-age statement whiskies. Now they have been distilling for close to a decade, is it now exclusively their own whiskey distilled on site in those NAS bottles? Looking at their website I am not seeing any information to confirm either way. If it is on the label then it is very hard to see from any online images I’ve been able to look at.
They have twenty-one year old and higher age stated products too, which - unless you know Teeling hasn’t been operating that long - could easily be confused for being their own distilled whiskey. Looking on their website at these releases they give no clear indication they didn’t distil them and press articles even talk about the whiskies being selected from their own reserves. They aren’t lying, but the language and labelling could be far clearer on this. The year 1782 also forms part of the branding, which is the date of the old Teeling distillery and not the current one.
Teeling is just one example of many I could choose from. Hinch distillery has been distilling since November 2020, but already have a range of products with age statements from five years up to nineteen years old. If you were a consumer that didn’t know the history of Hinch, would you know this ten year old was sourced? I only know because I did some research for this article. Are any of their non-age stated whiskies distilled at the distillery? I don’t know. Roe and Co opened in Dublin 2019, but without knowing how recent the distillery is, would you be able to tell that this fourteen year old - described on their website as “Roe & Co’s first permanent single grain release” - could not possibly have been distilled there?
It’s all very murky and if I have to do the leg work and research each time I want to find out if a spirit is actually distilled at the distillery named on the label, then I’m afraid I can’t really be bothered. Labelling requirements were updated in 2019 to ensure statements which claim sourced liquid was distilled at the distillery were not allowed, but they didn’t go far enough to make it a requirement that they must declare it is sourced from elsewhere. They can simply not mention it at all.
I can see how this type of practice might help sales short term, with the distillery name and branding on the label perhaps more attractive to customers, but it is surely damaging the category and any trust the public might have. Once they scratch beneath the surface and realise not all is as it seems, will all be lost?
When these distilleries do have their own whiskey, will it be easy to tell which one was sourced and which is their own product when they are side by side on a retailer’s shelf or in a retailer’s online listings? I would suggest not in many cases. Even if they are using their own distilled spirit, there doesn’t appear to be anything stopping them switching to sourced liquid - at any time - without informing the customer. For instance, if they simply run low on their own stocks.
In Scotland a distillery cannot release whisky under their distillery name unless it has been wholly distilled there, which is how it should be. There is nothing in the regulations to stop Glenfiddich buying casks from Glenlivet and selling them under a different brand name as an undisclosed single malt, but they can’t put a Glenfiddich label on it and pass it off as their own.
How that isn’t standard practice everywhere is baffling to me.
Anyway… That in itself is reason enough for me to avoid Irish whiskey. At least we know where the whiskey we have today was made.
Review
Powers John’s Lane 12yo, Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey, 46% ABV
£60 paid, general availability
What the whiskey I am reviewing today has in common with the aforementioned Green Spot and Redbreast is that it is also produced at Midleton distillery. The packaging states that it is produced at Midleton on the front of the tube in good sized font and in smaller font on the bottle label.
It also states it is bottled to celebrate the original John’s Lane distillery in Dublin, which was in production into the 1970’s before closing. It is no longer an operating distillery and they tell you so on the label. All good. John Power and Son joined forces with the only other remaining Republic of Ireland distillers - Cork Distilleries Company and John Jameson and Son – during difficult times in the industry in the 1960’s to form Irish Distillers, with the decision subsequently made to build a new distillery at the same site as the existing Midleton distillery and, sadly, close all the others down.
This bottle of Powers John’s Lane was not inexpensive. At £60 for a 12 year old at 46%, I am spoilt for choice when it comes to similarly presented Scotch I could buy, and still have spare change in my pocket. But it’s one of the Irish whiskies I have heard good things about and it’s always nice to try something new. It’s been nominated in each of the last three years OSWA’s and is better value than many of the other Irish whiskies available to me in the UK.
It is matured in a combination of ex-bourbon and oloroso sherry casks and bottled at 46% and non-chill filtered. There is no mention of whether this is natural colour or some has been added.
Score: 6/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
A flavourful, well-balanced, easy drinker
Nose
Red apples, both the juice and the skins come to the fore, with honey, vanilla and varnished wood. Nosing further I get notes of plum, raisins and milk chocolate.
Palate
Straightforward and very approachable, but flavourful with it. Honey is a big note on the palate, with the red apple coming through, but playing slightly second fiddle this time. Then comes darker and bitter notes of dark chocolate, coffee, raisin and oak, before it becomes creamy and even more chocolatey, which continues into the moderate length finish. Texture is a little thin.
The Dregs
I am not surprised this whiskey has many fans. It’s well balanced and easy drinking, but for me it lacks the layers or a flavour hook required to elevate it beyond a six.
There is a cask strength version which I believe is highly regarded by many enthusiasts. It doesn’t appear to be widely available at the moment, but I can see one UK based retailer has it in stock for £75 which seems good value against the regular 46% version. You can get it direct from Midleton for £76, but delivery is an eye watering £23 unless you break the £100 barrier where it becomes free.
I’m glad I jumped back into Irish whiskey after all this time, but lack of transparency needs to be addressed before I could see myself having any more than the occasional bottle on the shelf.
The legislation really needs to change to stop sourced whiskey from carrying the branding of a currently operating distillery, or at the very least it needs to clearly state on the front of the label that it is sourced from elsewhere. One thing I would suggest for any new distillery wanting to gain public trust is to make sure it is clear on the label that the spirit was distilled at your distillery once that becomes the case.
That way there can be no doubts in the mind of the customer.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT
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