At the 2021 Irish Whiskey Awards the Celtic Cask 35 not only took top honours in the best Single Cask category, but out of a total of 150 different whiskeys it emerged overall winner as Irish Whiskey of the Year 2021. Don’t let the cask number 35 fool you into thinking it is a 35 year old whiskey. It was initially matured in a first fill bourbon cask for 18 years before being partly decanted in March 2018 for a further period of maturation in an old 125 litre solera sherry cask that previously matured oloroso sherry. [Lengthy aside: one of the proposed changes to the Irish whiskey technical file that were submitted by the Irish Whiskey Association is to remove the use of numbers on labels that may be misinterpreted as an age statement. Conor McGregor’s Proper No. Twelve is seen to be the most popular transgressor and it has been mooted as the reason why the change was suggested. The most significant member of Irish Whiskey Association is Irish Distillers (Pernod Ricard) who are the makers of Jameson.] The sherry influence is significant in this whiskey and maybe overpoweringly so. The nose is a festive winter bouquet of mince pies, brandy, banana, fig, dark chocolate, and Christmas cake. The sherry influence dominates the palate and finish where it comes across as dry, sweet and tannic dark fruits much like a tonic wine. At 53.25% abv it is a bit numbing and it is all the better for a good dash of water to dampen its tannic and the spirity nature. As it happens, as a lottery winning member of my whiskey club I was one of the many judges for the Irish Whiskey Awards this year, and this was one of the 35 whiskeys that I blind tasted and rated. I rated it 33rd out of those 35 drams 😮 which goes to show how individual taste is or how pants I am at this whiskey lark. Most likely a little from column A; a little from column B.