Micheál O’Flaherty

Two things they associate with, 90% alcohol and potatoes.

Not traditionally, no.

So potatoes, you can make pudding from potatoes.

It's a really tough crop to use.

And potatoes arrived in the 1600s.

Family did a famously good job of wiping them out.

So they never became part of the selling tradition here in Ireland.

And also, people would eat potatoes.

Whereas the traditional grains would be barley, wheat, oats, and rye.

And that's what we would predominantly use was barley.

If we ask our head distiller, Jimmy Mikkel, his one canon rule is like malt is king.

So it's traditionally made with barley, oats, wheat, or rye.

So it's the way that it's distilled.

So when you're distilling many spirits, particularly spirits that have been aged, they're going to be put into barrels.

So what you do is you have three stages of distillation in your heads, which will drive you blind, drunk.

It's methylated spirits.

It's almost blue in colour.

So it's like seeing the yellow frog in the rainforest.

You do not touch it.

You stay away from it.