Blacks
Irish
Whiskey

2020 marked a huge milestone for us at Blacks, as we brought whiskey production in-house. Now milling, mashing, fermentation and distilling all take place at our distillery in Kinsale. Until our whiskey reaches maturity we will continue to source aged spirit and release new whiskeys to our customers, with our unique Blacks finish.

We know we are an extremely lucky bunch to be able to live out our passion for distilling on a daily basis, so we opened our doors to share this journey with other whiskey enthusiasts through our Blacks Whiskey Founders Club.

As the years go by, and our handcrafted Irish whiskey matures, we are excited to continue to add rare and first of a kind expressions to our portfolio.

A World’s First!  Blacks 18 year old Irish Rum Cask Finish

We’d like to introduce you to a very special release that has been in the pipeline for quite some time. Something that has never been done as far as “Uisce beatha” can be remembered!

Creating the first ever Irish Rum is something we are immensely proud of here in Kinsale and when our second release “Blacks Golden Rum” took home the Gold Medal at the World Rum Awards last year, we knew it was time to do something innovative with the casks that previously held this liquid gold!

We searched high and low and finally found a limited amount of aged Single Malt Whiskey we knew would match up to the characteristics of these casks.

The result being, a World’s first for Irish Whiskey – an Irish Rum Cask Finish.

We’d now like to introduce you to the newest member of the Blacks Family – Blacks 18 year Old Single Malt – Irish Rum Cask Finish. The World’s first ever Irish Whiskey finished in an Irish Rum cask. A whiskey lover’s dream come true! Limited to 563 individually numbered bottles, each in its very own bespoke treasure chest style box.

This cask strength beauty comes in at 56% ABV and will transport you to a World never travelled before by an Irish whiskey drinker.

Tasting Notes:

Aroma: Opens with confected aromas of vanilla maple syrup, sticky toffee pudding and candied fruit. Slight hints of coffee beans are set aside by the oak wood undertones before being reminded of banoffee pie and tropical desserts.

Palate: A velvet soft, toffee rich mouthfeel gives way to notes of caramel coated nuts and butter baked biscuits. Sweet malt and rum spices then demand your attention as exotic fruit notes push to the forefront of your palate.

Finish: An amazingly complex finish with lingering nutmeg spices and dried sultanas fading out before being left with the oak wood undertones that characterised this whiskey for the first 18 years of its life.

Blacks Irish Whiskey

In our infancy as a distillery we wished to bring you our take on Irish Whiskey, which resulted in a very special, limited edition 12 year old Single Malt Irish Whiskey. Key to a perfectly crafted whiskey is time. As a distillery starting out, time was not in our favour and therefore, in order to blend our first whiskey, we needed to source whiskey which had already been distilled and matured for a number of years.

We searched high and low across the island of Ireland until we found a small quantity of 12 year old single malt Irish whiskey which not only met our high standards for quality and taste, but exceeded them. We brought these oak barrels, carrying our precious cargo, home to Kinsale where we set about putting our Blacks stamp on our first Irish Whiskey.

Unique to Blacks is our finishing process. To create a more interesting whiskey we skipped the chill filtration step. While all Irish whiskey is filtered prior to bottling to remove particles of wood, which have accumulated during the maturation process, it is at the discretion of the distillery itself to decide whether they wish to chill filter or not. The reason for chill filtering in many whiskeys between an ABV of 40-46% is to prevent a haziness occurring in the whiskey which is caused by an accumulation of oils, esters and fatty acids. These usually occur when a whiskey is subjected to change of temperature. At Blacks we feel all these oils and esters add flavour to the whiskey so we made the decision to non chill filter and bring you this whiskey at an ABV of 46%.

Blacks OPS

Black OPS is comprised of a careful blend of malt and grain whiskey. This blend was matured in extra deep charred bourbon oak barrels for an extra smooth, extra dark black whiskey. In keeping with our proven whiskey technique this blend is also non chill filtered and was bottled at 43%.

On first inspection the nose reveals a layer of sweet malt followed by toffee, prunes and vanilla. Its complex second layer of aromas may catch you by surprise as hints of hay, oak, smoke and eucalyptus charm your senses.

This is a medium bodied whiskey with initial hints of sweetness followed by nut and savoury notes. You will be left with a lengthy finish of lingering herbal notes in addition to light spice and floral flavours.