The Market Has Already Been Tested

The craft argument for single pot still was not unreasonable ten years ago. At that point, many new producers had not released mature whiskey of their own. The belief that single pot still could become Ireland’s answer to single malt was still largely a hypothesis.

But the intervening years have tested that hypothesis.

Smaller producers have released single pot still whiskeys. They have told the history, explained the mash bills and promoted the category’s uniquely Irish identity. Sales and marketing teams have taken that story to importers, distributors, retailers and consumers.

I doubt that many craft producers would now say their single pot still consistently outsells their blends or single malts.

Many distilleries continue to be supported by blends, gin, vodka, sourced whiskey or home-produced single malt. Pot still remains one of the most difficult products for sales and marketing teams to explain beyond a small group of initiated drinkers.

It may provide an excellent story for an importer or specialist retailer. It remains a difficult proposition for the eventual consumer.

Most consumers understand relatively few whiskey terms. Many recognise “single malt,” even if their understanding of it is imperfect. Almost everyone understands an age statement. A number on the front of a bottle communicates something immediate: time, maturity, rarity and, whether correctly or not, quality.

“Single pot still” does not offer the same immediate clarity.

The moment its appeal depends on an explanation of malted and unmalted barley, mash composition, historical taxation and copper pot distillation, the sale has already become harder. That education can be enjoyable among enthusiasts. It is a significant obstacle when somebody is choosing a bottle in seconds.

Single pot still may be a meaningful production category, but it has failed to become an effective marketing engine. After years of industry education, it still does not carry the weight of “single malt,” and I fear it never will.

The Jameson Experiment

The release of Jameson Single Pot Still in 2022 provides a particularly interesting example.

I cannot know the internal strategic reasoning behind the product, and I do not claim to. From the outside, however, it looked like an unusually clean test of the category’s supposed appeal.

Jameson brought one of the strongest names in global whiskey together with the term “single pot still.” Here was the name consumers already understood, placed alongside the category the industry had spent years describing as Ireland’s unique selling point.

If single pot still needed a vehicle capable of carrying it into the mainstream, it would be difficult to imagine a stronger one.

Roughly three years later, the same liquid was renamed Jameson Distiller’s Batch. “Single pot still” remained on the bottle, but it was no longer the principal product name. The category moved from the headline to the supporting copy.

Irish Distillers presented this as part of a broader redesign of the Jameson family, intended to create greater clarity and emphasise craftsmanship. That may be the entire explanation. I find the change revealing nonetheless.

My interpretation is that Jameson Single Pot Still tested whether the strength of Jameson could sell the term “single pot still” to a wider audience. The subsequent repositioning suggests that the production category was not carrying sufficient meaning on its own.

“Distiller’s Batch” communicates craft, selection and the role of the distiller without requiring the consumer to understand a technical definition.

That is not proof that the whiskey failed, nor that consumers disliked it. It suggests something more fundamental: the words “single pot still” may not have helped people understand why they should buy it.

This runs directly against the idea that the market has been demanding a broader pot still category.

The enthusiast market may have demanded it. Producers may have demanded it. Historians may have demonstrated why it is justified. Importers and distributors may welcome another distinctive Irish story.

The wider market has shown far less interest.

That does not make single pot still bad whiskey. It means the category name has failed to develop the buying power the craft industry assumed it would have.

A Definition Is Not a Business Model

This brings me back to the argument I made in my previous Oak Alchemy article. I do not want to repeat that argument in full here, but the essential point was that a craft whiskey business cannot be sustained solely by products positioned at the apex of the market.

Single malt and single pot still may represent some of the most prestigious products a distillery can make, but an apex requires a base.

Long-aged premium whiskey cannot provide the funding floor a young distillery needs unless some other product, activity or source of capital supports the years before that whiskey can be sold at meaningful scale.

Changing the Technical File does not solve that problem.

Consider the producer who has already laid down a substantial quantity of pot-distilled, mixed-mash-bill spirit which qualifies as Irish whiskey, but not as pot still Irish whiskey under the present definition.

The conventional argument is that broadening the Technical File would unlock the commercial potential of that stock by allowing the producer to place “single pot still” on the label.

I am not convinced that it would.

It would change the legal classification of the whiskey, but that does not necessarily give the bottle any greater selling power. That assumption only works if “single pot still” is already a description consumers recognise, understand and actively seek out.

My argument is that, outside a relatively small group of enthusiasts, it has repeatedly failed to become one.

The words “Irish whiskey” may therefore be a more commercially useful description than “single pot still Irish whiskey.” Irish whiskey is an established category with broad international recognition. It immediately tells the consumer where the product comes from and places it within a category they are likely to understand.

“Single pot still” adds specificity, but specificity is only commercially valuable when the customer understands what it means and considers it desirable.

Changing the words on the label does not change the liquid. More importantly, it does not change the customer.

A producer may feel that an important historical wrong has been corrected when their whiskey can finally be described as single pot still. The person buying the bottle may be entirely indifferent. In some circumstances, placing greater emphasis on an unfamiliar technical category may make the product more difficult, not easier, to sell.

The reform may nevertheless matter personally and philosophically to the producer. It may allow the spirit to be presented in a way that better reflects its production and historical inspiration. That is a legitimate reason to support it.

It should not be confused with unlocking a substantial new market.

Changing the Technical File will not create distribution, generate working capital or teach consumers why they should choose one unfamiliar Irish whiskey over hundreds of alternatives.

Nor does it answer the central question facing every small producer: what can we make consistently, at sufficient scale, for a price the market will pay?

For most of the industry, little will change. The largest volumes of pot still whiskey will continue to be made to achieve particular flavour profiles within established brands. Those whiskeys may contain pot still spirit without “pot still” being the decisive part of the consumer proposition.

What Consolidation Tells

This is why I increasingly see the modern Irish whiskey industry not simply as the diminished remnant of an older industry, but as a remarkable story of survival through consolidation.

The old industry was geographically dispersed. Numerous distilleries produced their own spirit, supported their own brands and carried the costs of their own production infrastructure. There is romance in that history, particularly when viewed from the present.

There was also duplication, fragmentation and inefficiency.

The industry that survived was built around a small number of highly capable manufacturing centres. Midleton, Bushmills and later Cooley could produce at scale while supporting multiple brands and styles.

Production was consolidated, but the market did not have to be served by a single brand. The manufacturing entity could achieve the efficiencies of scale while individual brands retained distinct identities and positions.

That was not merely the destruction of an older model. It was also a solution to the economic weaknesses within that model.

The modern craft industry is now attempting to reverse the process. Once again, we have numerous small producers, each operating its own facility, laying down relatively small parcels of spirit and attempting to establish one or more brands. Each must carry its own overheads, develop its own route to market and fund its own maturing stocks.

We are trying to recreate the fragmented industry whose economic weaknesses consolidation helped to resolve.

That does not mean small distilleries cannot survive, nor does it mean they should all make the same whiskey. It means that history deserves to be examined in its entirety.

We cannot romanticise the diversity of old mash bills while ignoring the commercial structure in which many of those recipes disappeared.

Learning the Wrong Lesson From History

The historical research into Irish mash bills is fascinating and valuable. It can recover lost knowledge, correct an incomplete definition and inspire worthwhile experiments.

But there is a danger that we are learning the wrong lesson from the history of whiskey.

Irish whiskey did not decline because its mash bills became insufficiently diverse. Its collapse involved political upheaval, lost export markets, Prohibition, trade barriers, damaged reputation, depleted stocks and an industry that struggled to adapt to a changing international market.

Scotch whisky’s later difficulties offer a related warning. The whisky loch of the 1980s was not caused by a lack of technical freedom or insufficient product variety. It followed years of optimism, overproduction and a subsequent fall in demand. Distilleries produced for a future market that did not materialise as expected, leaving the industry with excessive stocks and the closures that followed.

Whiskey is particularly vulnerable to this mistake because production decisions are made years before the resulting product can be sold. Confidence today becomes stock tomorrow, but the consumer does not make a promise to be waiting when that stock reaches maturity.

That is the historical lesson with the greatest relevance to the modern Irish craft industry.

The questions we should be asking are not only what grains distillers used in the nineteenth century. We should also ask why distilleries disappeared, why production consolidated, how successful brands achieved scale, what happens when supply outruns demand and how an industry survives the distance between making whiskey and finding somebody willing to buy it.

Those lessons may be less romantic than a recovered mash bill, but they are far more urgent.

History is evidence of tradition. It is not evidence of demand.

Returning to the Panel

After preparing for the Cork Whiskey Society panel, taking part in the discussion and having time afterward to consider the arguments made, my position is relatively straightforward.

I favour broadening the definition of pot still Irish whiskey.

The historical evidence supports it. Producers should be able to explore historically authentic mash bills containing larger proportions of oats, rye, wheat and other grains with a demonstrable place in the Irish tradition. Spirit made according to that tradition should not be excluded from the pot still subcategory merely because the present specification reflects a much narrower period of production.

If the question is whether the current Technical File offers a complete and historically satisfying definition of pot still Irish whiskey, my answer is no.

If the question is whether broadening that definition will materially change the fortunes of Irish whiskey, my answer is also no.

The proposed reform may settle a historical argument. It may give producers greater freedom. It may allow a small quantity of existing spirit to carry a different description. It may encourage worthwhile experimentation and produce some excellent whiskeys.

But if the Technical File remains unchanged, the market for Irish whiskey will continue much as it does today. If it is broadened, the market for Irish whiskey will also continue much as it does today.

The major producers will continue making the products for which there is established demand. Smaller producers will continue relying on blends, single malt, sourced whiskey, white spirits, tourism and other sources of revenue. Pot still will continue to produce excellent whiskey while remaining difficult to communicate beyond the initiated consumer.

That is the central point I took away from the Cork Whiskey Society panel.

We have spent years treating the Technical File as though it were standing between Irish whiskey and some unrealised commercial future. I no longer believe that it is.

Perhaps the Technical File has occupied so much of our attention because it offers an unusually attractive kind of problem. It is specific, external and potentially fixable. Change the percentages, recognise the grains and declare the category liberated.

The harder problems are less romantic. They involve capital, stock, efficiency, distribution, consumer understanding and the uncomfortable requirement to produce enough of something people actually want.

The definition should be broadened because doing so would be historically honest, not because it will save craft distilling, unlock a mass market or transform single pot still into Ireland’s answer to single malt.

We should correct the definition. We should recognise the history. We should make the whiskeys and discover what they have to offer.

But whether the Technical File changes or not, the difficult work facing Irish whiskey will remain exactly where it was.

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By Oisín Mulcahy · Launched a year ago

Musing on the spirits industry from an independent spirits expert. I discuss all things from the spirits market dynamics to the nitty gritty of production, blending and lots more.