‘This first is a twelve-year-old Jameson which has a combination of spice with mild woody undertones.’ The bottle label declares: ‘Sweetly mellowed by age’. She uncorks it and thrusts it under my nose saying it has matured in an oak cask. I detect a strong sherry aroma and cocoa taste.
‘In later years it has been matured in a cask and you get the sherry smells coming through. It has a lovely long finish as well.’
An English couple is the first to arrive. They order a pint of beer and a glass of red wine, sitting silently at a table in the corner listening to my personalised tour.
‘We’ll move on to a slightly older Jameson – the eighteen-year-old Master Selection. The nose of this produces a spicier, almost toffee-fudge smell with a hint of nuttiness. The thing you find about the whiskies that are older than sixteen is that they become more toffee-like and concentrated by virtue of the fact that they are in the cask for that much longer. You get more of a nutty note coming through.’
Two bearded Dutchmen walk in and order Guinness. She darts round the counter to serve them and deal with a query: ‘How do you get to Caves of Moher?’
Margaret teaches during the day, and multitasks seven nights a week as barmaid, whiskey adviser, and one-woman tourist information dispenser on the Shannon region’s attractions. She deals with their question, tops up the creamy head of the stout and hands them their change.
‘Now from Jameson we’ll switch to Midleton Very Rare, a Cork whiskey launched in 1984 and one of Ireland’s most exclusive. It has a spicy bouquet along with herbal touches. This is a very popular whiskey and at €14 a shot it is quite expensive, in fact it used to be our most expensive. But it’s a vintage that has been aged to perfection and is the blend of many whiskies coming from a variety of casks.’
When I sip it I notice a spicy smell with flora touches and a hint of fruits and honey. The bar is beginning to fill. A man from the Czech Republic: ‘I stay two nights in Low-goose … and tomorrow want to go to Doaling, do I go down the Screwer cork hill?’
Margaret’s brow furrows … ‘Low-goose?’
‘It is B and B here.’
‘Awh … Logue’s B and B.’
From the far south of Ireland to the extreme north-east corner of north Antrim, we uncork a Black Bush from the Bushmills distillery. This is a drink, she says, with cult status – a mingling of fruity, malty and nutty sweet sherry. ‘It’s the most popular because it sells at a reasonable price and is affordable. It is a good all-year-round drink with a distinctive full-bodied aroma.’
There is no doubting the full-bodied side to it and by now my tastebuds are tingling. Margaret then produces a Bushmills sixteen-year-old which has what the experts call ‘three wood’ maturation and finishing. It has been matured in a combination of American Bourbon barrels and Spanish Oloroso sherry butts for at least sixteen years. ‘We sell two single malts, a ten-year-old Bushmills which has overtones of vanilla and honey, and this sixteen-year-old. It has a ruby red colour as it has been in the cask much longer and the result is a fragrant and honeyed almond smell.’
A party of Germans bustles in and orders five half-pints of stout: ‘Ve are coming from Düsseldorf unt spenting a veek in zis part of ze vest of Ireland unt tomorrow ve are wisiting some of ze churches ruins here unt ve wery much vish to see Clonamnoisey.’
While she is serving, I pour some water into my drink from a small Tullamore Dew jug and feel an oakiness and dry fruity brush on the back of my throat. I admire a mirror advertising H. S. Persse’s Galway Whiskey, 1815, Nuns Island Distillery: As supplied to the House of Commons. The walls are decorated with framed black and white photographs of local characters and faded newspaper clippings. A small candle flickers in a glass vase on a shelf above an oil-fired stove. On the wall hangs a framed Admiralty Chart of Galway Bay produced by the Hydrographic Office in 1850. Beside it is a 1924 timetable for the Galway Bay Steamboat Co. Ltd giving the times of the Steamer Dun Aengus for services to Aran, Ballyvaughan and Kinvara.
Back at the counter it is time for Powers twelve-year-old Special Reserve with a hint of perfumed oils and a honeyed aroma. ‘The standard Powers would be aged about eight years. This one is very fresh and the twelve years gives it that much more flavour with spice, honey and perfume. As a celebration or a one-off occasion, the connoisseur likes this version …’
A Thai visitor interrupts: ‘Can you tell me how to go Lisdoonfarout?’ Margaret produces a map. ‘I like to go for the mating season there … when that is?’
Unflappably, she picks up the story ‘… there’s one interesting thing about this bottle – Powers Gold Label – as it has three swallows on it. John Power used to say that it should be drunk in three swallows: one, two, three … down the hatch.’
Not wishing to be rude to John Power, I obey his instructions swallowing it in three quick gulps. ‘Now you’ve often, I’m sure, seen the turf drying on the side of the narrow roads in Connemara, so we’ll try the Connemara peated whiskey. It is the only peated one that we stock. It’s selling well and is made by the Cooley distillery in Dundalk.’
She pours it into what she calls a special ‘nose-in-the-glass’ designed to contain the flavour and inscribed with calligraphy script saying Connemara peated single malt. ‘When you’re talking about peated whiskies you have to wonder how the peat flavours the whiskey and that happens very early in the whole distilling process. A lot of tourists like it because it evokes the sense of Irishness that we are trying to get across and it’s a big hit with the Americans as it smells of the Ireland of their imagination.’
On cue, an American couple: ‘Ma’am, we feel we deserve one of your finest whiskies ’coz we’ve had an awesomely long day starting out from our hotel in Eerie Square in Galway, then on to Doonaguaire Castle, Cork-ker-com-crow Abbey, then the big doll-man, and then we went to …’
In between pulling, pouring, serving, and listening politely to American tourists’ monologues, Margaret deals with a host of queries before returning to sniffing. My marathon whiskey-drinking and -smelling session is slowing up. I find the Connemara peated has an initial fiery edge on my palate that soon settles down. Relentlessly she pushes on.
‘Green Spot is our house whiskey and this one is around eight years of age. It is mellow and triple-distilled like all Irish whiskies. There is some sweetness on the finish and it has a lively clean nose. It has been quite difficult to get your hands on it as it comes directly from the suppliers in Dublin but it’s very popular and we sell it by the bottle.’
My heart strings have cracked and I begin to feel a small bit groggy. Twenty Scottish peaty whiskies remain untested. Margaret surveys the shelves and laughs. ‘We have 400 bottles of whiskey which include some repeats so it’s a lot of dusting every day. The one we have most of is Midleton Very Rare, which is one of the oldest.’
A Chinese woman, with a torn green Michelin map of Ireland, orders a ‘grass’ of beer: ‘I try to get to Rimrick tomorrow – you show me how?’
The bar is crowded and Margaret is busy treble-jobbing. She remains unflustered and wants me to smell some Scottish whiskies. I’m suffering a bout of MEGO: My Eyes Glaze Over. ‘I’ve a couple left out here for you. Laphroaig from Islay is a single malt ten-years-old. It is a deep gold colour as you can see and is powerful on the nose.’
A long smell shows evidence of its smoky and tangy nature. ‘It has seashore salt and earthy aromas. You’ll notice it has a considerably different smell to the Irish whiskies with different scent because of the water that they use and the amount of peat.’
It is getting difficult to differentiate between the whiskies. Coconut tastes blur with chocolate and caramel. ‘The other one is Oban which has been matured for fourteen years. It’s strong but not as overpowering and has a fresh, delicate hint of peat aroma with a long, smooth finish.’
At the end of our session Margaret talks about her own taste in whiskey. ‘If I was out somewhere special I would take a Bushmills single cask which encouraged me to buy it a
s there are only a few left. Some customers start with an eight-year-old and move up to a twelve-year-old. ’Tis better if they start younger and move on. Many also come here for the beers because we are well known for being a very good Guinness house so customers would drink whiskey alongside their beers. People love the scent firstly. They then look at how it behaves in the glass, holding it to the light before sipping it slowly. Most people drink it without adding anything but it is recommended that a little water enhances the flavour.’
Margaret tells me about the tourist trade and her unofficial guiding role. ‘I like the customer to be satisfied and try to direct them to some of our sites so my modus operandi is to make them happy. We have many countries represented here and all sorts of people. In 2009 Steven Spielberg was in the Burren for a week and came in every night. He was staying with the writer and poet David Whyte, who was holding a retreat with music, poetry and dance. Spielberg was here with his wife Kate Capshaw, their daughter and son-in-law. I got a signed photograph of him and he was a very personable man but of course we just treated him like every other customer. He drank Guinness and later told David that this was his favourite pub in the whole world.’
Ó Loclainn’s features in many guidebooks and is on a celebrated Irish whiskey trail. Scrupulously clean and well run, its strength lies in its simplicity and in the absence of TV screens. At the bewitching hour there is barely elbow room in the main bar and in the words of one woman ‘the only seats left are the toilet seats’. The back rooms are packed with drinkers propping up the walls and chatting animatedly. A group has gathered around a guitarist called Christine in a small snug. They applaud as she gently and tenderly strum-sings the landscape to life. ‘The Mountains of Mourne’, ‘Carrickfergus’, ‘Galway Bay’, ‘The Fields of Athenry’ and ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ are all part of the rich topographical musical tour that has visitors poring over their maps in search of the locations.
Many locals, including three men wearing blue Tour de Burren T-shirts, mingle alongside the polyglot clientele. The man from Thailand, who had been busy taking photographs of mirrors from long-forgotten distilleries, joins me just before closing time for the clinking of whiskey tumblers in a joint Black Bush nightcap where sláinte meets chok-dee in celebration of nutty sweetness. Wrinkling his nose above the glass, he raises an approving eyebrow and little finger in unison. I talk nonsensically to him about the ‘drama of the attack’ of certain uisce beatha and about my travels through an intoxicated landscape. He tells me about Chiang Mai where he used to live and where one day he hopes to return. With a farewell handshake, a ‘velly nice to meet you Mister Paul’, and a wave to ‘Misses Margaret’ now deep in a cartographic discussion with two Italians about the wonders of the Black Head coast road, he closes the door on one of the Burren’s most sensory delights and on a bar reeking of a rapturous combination of whiskey and history.
Margaret Ó Loclainn, owner of Ó Loclainn’s bar, Ballyvaughan © Trevor Ferris
6
The Hypnotic Fascination of Mullaghmore
There are a handful of mountains and mountain landscapes to which I return addictively like an unrequited lover craving favours, secrets, intimacies.
Jim Crumley, Among Mountains
In the Irish mountain world it does not have superstar status. It rarely merits a mention in the plethora of walking guides to the hills of Ireland. On some maps it is not even shown. Many people who set out to walk it have trouble finding it and often lose themselves in the track of boreens that lead to this secluded place. At a mere 191m it is one of the Burren’s smaller hills. It is not majestic, aristocratic, or anywhere near jaw-dropping. It is not on most climbers’ list since there is no serious challenge in reaching the top. They scoff at the idea of it as a mountain. It is too tame. No survival skills are required on this hillside – it will take an hour or two at most to walk to the summit. And yet, sitting in the extreme southeast of the accepted territory of the Burren almost falling off the edge, the hill of Mullaghmore, through a strange magnetism, encapsulates the heartbeat of the place.
Early one Easter Monday I tackled it again. I have been here in fifteen seasons. I have seen it in short days of mid-winter clarity, shimmering in a hazy summer heatwave, glowing in autumnal mist, and on dank days with skies of blanket greyness. By now its gentle inclines have a comforting familiarity, but each time the re-connection with the drama of it is stronger. There is a compelling softness about dawn. Early rising has been a feature of my life as a journalist working shifts in a newsroom. In a city certain things happen at dawn which only early risers see: pigeons picking through the vomit deposited by the night-before revellers, broken bottles and twisted beer cans filling the gutters, pavements littered with cigarette butts and, just occasionally, a blood red sunrise.
On this crisp morning Mullaghmore looks well-defined, revealing its folds and crannies. If it had an anthropomorphic personality, it would beam out a radiant smile greeting visitors with its stepped terraces and calling them in with a warming welcome. The difference with this early morning arousal is that the pavements are limestone and are littered with orchids, mountain avens, bird’s-foot trefoil and shrubby cinquefoil. I register the presence in the distance of a vocal cuckoo, the spring leitmotif of the Burren: four vociferous calls at evenly spaced intervals.
Leaving the rhythm of the tarred road after a short distance, I step through a gap in a stone wall on to grey, thick-bedded limestone clints. Early purple orchids stand in solitary splendour alongside thorn bushes as I make my way to the foothills, passing the shores of Lough Gealáin which is part-turlough with changing levels through the seasons. The atmospheric fragility, the still air and the extended silences are apparent. This landscape is classic Burren. It requires careful stepping to avoid falling into the hollows and grykes or slipping on the clints, mindful that they may tilt, and working my way round enormous boulders. Wrong-footing yourself is an occupational walking hazard here and requires attention as to where you put your feet. I enjoy the scenery on walks but here it is a case of eyes on the ground until I gain some height. Stopping to check my flora book, I catch sight of a frog lurking inconspicuously in a gryke. I watch its erratic hopping progress. It pauses for a few seconds, jumping from clint to clint, before making the big leap into a small oval-shaped pool of shallow water. Basking contentedly in the sun, it ignores my presence and then, without as much as a humble croak or chirp, disappears swiftly into a green fern-filled world.
My AA Illustrated Guide to Ireland describes Mullaghmore as having ‘a high rock strata, folded and contorted like dough’. Tim Robinson says its ‘terraced sides are so curved as to make it look like a layer-cake that has sunk in the cooking’. From the lower slopes of the terrace, I pick up a grassy track for ten minutes. It feels much easier on my feet and a contrast from the dull thud and ‘clunk-clunk’ of the clints. I admire a trio of potato-shaped erratics and clamber over another wall, my third en route to the summit. Carpets of geraniums – up to thirty in each clump – are spread out before me. I come to a sheer 12-metre-high cliff face and survey the sweep of the countryside. As daylight strengthens, Mullaghmore works its magic. With its foothills and terraces, it is a haunting place of peace. A shout here could travel 160km perhaps landing somewhere in west Wicklow. The noises that I note are an unseen aircraft, and the throbbing of a reversing tractor. I negotiate three tiers of terracing which involves some scrambling to reach the top.
The combination of sun and walking has brought perspiration beads and I pause to remove my fleece. On the second terracing, before tackling another set of stepped stones, I watch the clouds move lower. The higher orchids have a much more withered appearance and look past their best. I make my way up another cliff-side and across a short plateau to the final terracing – this one marked with scree to the top where a chest-high cairn denotes the summit. Someone has placed six flat stones on top of each other, with a couple of smaller ones on top. I place my own.
I feel my heart beat
ing strongly, not because of the climb, but because of a heightened sense that I am alone, out of reach of other humans, sharply aware of being alive. Quietly I draw breath at the top, reflecting on the silence. There is no trace, sight or sound of the three Cs: cars, cows and chainsaws. Over my left ear another double C – Cuculus canorus – again looks for my attention.
I pull off my rucksack, drink a quarter of my litre bottle of water in one gulp and enjoy a lunch in the company of banded snails sleeping on the grass and rocks. As I munch my way through a fat brie and bacon sandwich, I count ten snails surrounding my boots. Some flies hover, attracted by the smell of my soup, but quickly disappear. Several wasps fidget, and bees cruise by. There is no wind. A spider dances over my map that is lying open on the grass beside me. A fly lands on Kilnaboy.
Moving from the microscopic to the macroscopic, I use my binoculars to pick up the cardinal directions of widescreen Burren. The summit of Mullaghmore offers a new perspective of the landmass and distances, a place to grasp the dimensions and provide broad vistas to all points of the compass. To my immediate north lies the main Burren territory. Dozens of mighty boulders are strewn at intervals across the limestone. A long procession of sun-wakened hills sits in a restful line of neatly spaced intervals: Knockanes, Turloughmore and off to the northwest Slievecarran. Immediately to the west lies Glasgeivnagh Hill, while on the south side, unassuming green fields fill the picture. I pick out isolated bungalows, a red barn, and an old square farmhouse with smoke belching from its chimney. A long line of trees stretching for several kilometres delimits the Burren’s natural southern boundary. Faraway, heavily pregnant clouds hang over the hills of south Clare. Fields of cattle sit in the sun. A pair of ravens glides across my view, shouting incomprehensible phrases before crashing with a distinct lack of finesse on to the limestone. Beyond the main road to the south and east are a series of long, thin, quaintly named, freshwater loughs – Inchiquin, Atedaun, Cullaun, George, Ballyeighter and Bunny. These lakes, just outside the barony of the Burren, are all-year-round loughs in that they retain their water throughout the summer and winter, unlike turloughs.
Burren Country Page 8
