2025 - a year in review

What a great year we had in 2025! It was a year when we introduced membership for the first time and our attendances at our events just grew and grew. That's not to mention some very cool members-only events we run and a whiskey we launched, so last year was a very exciting twelve months with many highlights to review.

We kicked our year off with an introduction to whiskey - always a very popular event where we chatted through some whiskey (and whisky!) basics for those who want to learn some of the basics. John Lynch and I brought the group through six expressions from Irish, American and Scottish distilleries - Jameson, Jim Beam Extra Aged, Talisker Skye, Glendalough Double Barrel, Arran Quarter Cask and Fercullen 15. Personally, although my palate is very Irish-focused, I very much enjoyed the Arran Quarter Cask - one for me to explore further! We had a great chat afterwards where the expressions and regions were heavily debated.

We then popped down to Wexford to attend the South East Whiskey Festival at the end of February 2025, kicking off with a lovely meal in Greenacres (with about a half-dozen whiskeys to accompany it) on the Thursday evening.

Over the weekend I attended tastings by Kilbeggan, Killowen, Redbreast and Echlinville - absolutely spoiled with the quality of the offerings. It was great to hang out with everyone, making new friends and reconnecting with old acquaintances.

It's definitely one of our favourite events of the year.

We returned to Browne's for our first semi-outdoor event of the year with Adam Wall and Graham Kinsella from Teelings distillery in late April 2025. We had around 50 attendees for this one and we enjoyed six great expressions - plus a sneaky seventh bonus dram too. We tried the Small Batch, Single Malt, 200 Fathoms Imperial Stout finish, Single Pot Still, Wonders of Wood Swedish Oak, Rising Reserve 21 year old and Blackpitts Cask Strength as the bonus. A really incredible evening!

In May, we were delighted to have Séamus Óg Birt and Niall Bolger from the Echlinville distillery with us to present some of their multiple-award winning whiskeys. Another full house met the Echlinville team and enthusiastically enjoyed the story of the distillery and the quality of the liquids.

Séamus Óg and Niall combined to give us a really great 360 of the distillery from the sales pitch and branding through to the distillation itself and from the history of the distillery to the future of the brands. A top class evening.

The club then took our annual pilgrimage to the RDS to attend Whiskey Live 2025 in May. There were various groups attending at various times, and I got to attend the first tasting during early afternoon on the Friday. This is a must-attend event for Irish whiskey enthusiasts as it gives a chance to meet and chat with industry professionals and other enthusiasts too. We had a great afternoon trying new samples and reconnecting with our friends.

We were back to Browne's at the end of June to welcome Gary Ring from Boann down for a very popular evening where we tried some existing releases and some cask pulls too - the attendees were simply astonished by the quality of the spirit coming down the tracks at the Boann distillery.

At the event we sampled the Whistler Triple Oak (a recent release at the time), Boann Single Pot Still PX (a 99-point winner at the San Francisco Spirit Competition), Boann Solstice #5 (released six days prior to the tasting) and three cask pulls - a 4-year old full maturation European Oak Hogshead, a 3.5-year old full maturation Amontillado Hogshead American Oak and a 4-year old full maturation PX Hogshead American Oak.

This tasting very much put Boann on the map for our members!

Dave Cummins from Dingle visited us in mid-September to talk all things Dingle with us in Browne's. Dingle was an old favourite of mine and I was delighted when we had another 50ish attendees to welcome Dave to Gorey. Dave walked us through the journey of the distillery's whiskeys from new make through ageing - a very cool education for us all.

It was another great evening of entertainment and education!

In August, we had a members-only event where we acted as judges for the Irish Whiskey Awards which is run by the Celtic Whiskey Store. This was a blind tasting where we didn't know the whiskeys or even the categories being judged.

We had a blast working through the samples and learned a lot along the way. John Robinson and I attended the awards themselves in the Teelings distillery in November where the Echlinville release Dunville's 21-year old Palo Cortado took the win - which happened to be one we were selected to judge.

Our last public event of the year saw us welcome Lough Ree Distillery to Browne's (inside!) for another sold-out event. Not all of our members were familiar with Lough Ree Distillery and so there was a lot of learning during the evening where Darragh did a wonderful job in teaching us about the distillery as well as showing us some of the excellent whiskeys they produce!

I know quite a few bottles of the Portaneena expression were snapped up immediately after the event - I picked up one myself as I thought it was a superb drop.

In early December, we were finally able to release our own expression - the Gorey Whiskey Club inaugural whiskey release. This was a release many months in the working and we were delighted to collaborate with our friends at Two Stacks to make this release happen.

The release was limited to 96 bottles and was a 13-year old single grain whiskey finished in Henriques & Henriques Madeira casks and released at 54% ABV. Feedback has been very positive and, as a club, it was a real yardstick moment for us.

Finally, we wrapped up our year with another members-only event - this time we moved to the Ashdown Park Hotel for an ultra-premium tasting in early December. Our key whiskeys at the event were Midleton Very Rare 2025, Redbreast 19 Sonny Molloys, Michters 10-year old Single Cask Rye, Celtic Cask 53 and Bushmills Causeway 2008 Muscatel finish.

It was a simply amazing event with great people, incredible whiskeys and quite a few bonus samples and gifts throughout.

Phew - what a year. Our aim for 2026 is to make it even better than 2025 and we're very much looking forward to sharing the year with our members and friends. Thank you all for your support during 2025 which has allowed us to do some amazing things.

Here's to 2026!