Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
- Finding a new way to shed Writers’ Tears in Galway - November 28, 2024
- A last red rose and a final farewell - November 22, 2024
- Writers’ Tears and Galway memories - November 21, 2024
Meet Lena Canning, Brand Executive for Walsh Whiskey in Ireland and a walking, talking evangelist/encyclopaedia on all things related to Irish whiskey.
I chanced upon Lena at Dublin Duty Free (ARI’s brilliantly coloured new branding in the Irish capital’s gateway) last week en route to Paris after having attended the late Colm McLoughlin’s funeral in County Clare.
Regular readers of this Blog will recall my affinity with Writers’ Tears – both the name and the product. Heck, I have shed enough of them down the years at all those moments of deadlines looming like a guillotine over a condemned man during the French Reign of Terror.
But it’s the juice inside the bottle I most like. Writers’ Tears, famed for its thrice-distilled, single pot still curation, has been one of my go-to tipples for many years, a celebratory taoscán (dram) after a late-night assignment completed or a consolatory one after an All Blacks rugby loss to Ireland (a worrying trend that appears to have eased, at least for now).
As I entered the brightly hued Dublin Duty Free liquor zone, I was equally dazzled by the latest Writers’ Tears line extension – described as the world’s first tequila-finished single pot still Irish whiskey.
Walsh Whiskey was acquired by Amber Beverage Group in 2021 and it is that ownership link which led to the creation of Writers’ Tears Tequila Finish.
Amber Beverage owns Rooster Rojo and Kah tequila, a connection that saw the new expression matured in bourbon barrels before being finished in Añejo tequila barrels for nine months.
At a still early point of a six-week journey on the road that has taken in Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi, Dublin, Galway and County Clare to date with Paris, London, Ystradgynlais (Wales), Dubai and Saudi Arabia to come, it wasn’t the occasion to buy a bottle. But that didn’t stop Lena from engaging with me and telling me all about the new whiskey.
Lena knew almost as much about The Moodie Davitt Report as she does about Walsh Whiskey and we had a great chat, interspersed only by her stopping to talk with immense passion and professionalism to customers about the whiskies on offer.
What a great ambassador for Irish whiskey, the company, the retailer and the country.
Ireland is the birthplace of so many literary giants, including the likes of George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker and Colm Tóibín among many others, that Writers’ Tears surely deserves to rank as a national liquid institution.
It certainly does for me, my only near tearful moment this time due to regret that I had not on this occasion been able to add to my collection. ✈
Earlier in Ireland…
