Connemara Peated Single Malt is the whiskey that quietly rewrote the rules. Irish whiskey is, by its unofficial reputation, triple-distilled and unpeated; Connemara is double-distilled and peated, a revival of an older Irish style that had effectively gone extinct before Cooley Distillery brought it back.
Cooley was founded in 1987 by John Teeling in County Louth, breaking the duopoly of Irish Distillers and Bushmills, and Connemara was its flagship argument that Irish whiskey had once been more varied than the modern category remembered. Kilbeggan Distilling Company, which now owns Cooley and Kilbeggan, is part of Beam Suntory.
The nose is instructive: this is Irish peat, not Islay peat. The smoke is softer, drier, more hay-barn than seaweed, and it sits over a honeyed malt base that is unmistakably Irish. Vanilla and a faint orchard fruit underneath keep it approachable. On the palate the honey comes first, then wood smoke rolling across baked apple and a pinch of pepper — the balance between sweetness and smoke is the whole point of the dram.
The finish is medium and gently smoky, the peat embers fading into lingering honey. Bottled at 40% ABV with no age statement, this is the entry to the Connemara range, and it does its job beautifully: it proves that peated Irish whiskey exists, and that it tastes like nowhere else.
A revelation for anyone who thinks they already know what Irish whiskey tastes like.
