Connemara 12 Year Old

Connemara Peated

Made at the Cooley Distillery in County Louth, I’m not too sure what this malt has to do with Connemara region which is on the opposite side of the island of Ireland. The Connemara landscape certainly makes a nice picture on the tube and it looks like the kind of place a peaty Irish whiskey might hail from. The nose is shared almost equally...

Score 86/100

Connemara Peated

A barren plain of rocks earmarked by the raging winds of the Atlantic, an eerie no-man’s-land of moors, bogs and shimmering blue lakes. How the hell did the East-Irish distiller Cooley think they could capture the essence of the land using nothing but Scottish peat? When trying Connemara (the 12yo) for the first time, in an Irish pub in the town...

Score 78/100

Connemara Peated

Nose, Taste, Finish and Balance are graded out of 2.5 each: Nose: This is of course an Irish peated whiskEy, however once the word peat is involved, immediately we're thinking Islay scotch whisky. The nose is certainly Islay in character, in that we have the unmistakeable iodine and seaweed character, however it is sweeter than most of the famous...

Score 80/100

Connemara Peated

Another beauty from Cooley Distillery (where my fav Greenore is also distilled) just south of the Irish border, that won two gold medals in 2008 (which is when I got my first bottle - definitively not the last!). Dubbed 'the Smokey One', it starts with a sweet honey taste, followed by dried fruits. It has a nice long peaty finish. In my humble...

Score 76/100