Roe & Co – A New Irish Premium Blend
Diageo’s Master Blender, Caroline Martin and her team spent time sourcing and selecting stocks of the very finest Irish Whiskies and trialed over 100 prototype blends since December 2014, and this Premium Irish Blend is the result of all her hard work.
Roe & Co is named after George Roe, a once world-famous Whiskey maker in the 19th century. His distillery in Dublin was once Irelands largest. For hundreds of years Guinness and George Roe & Co were neighbours and the two biggest names in distilling and brewing.
Diageo are investing over £18 million over three years in a Whiskey distillery (St James Gate Distillery) in the once Power Station at St James Gate which is just a stones throw away from where George Roe’s distillery stood.
This blend of Roe & Co will be available from 1st March 2017 in key European cities.
Dr. Nick Morgan of Diageo says,
“The growth in the premium Irish Whiskey category is far outpacing that in the standard product sector. Roe & Co. is modern, contemporary and will be ‘playing in a different space’ to some of the famous Irish whiskeys currently on the market.”
We do love the bottle and the labelling, I really like how they have offset the lower front label and the embossing on the bottle.
Now let’s have a wee taste of this Irish blend.
Roe & Co Blended Irish Whiskey, Non-chill filtered, 70 cl, 45% Alc/vol
Colour…Melted Demerara
Nose…Soft ripe fruits, pears, peaches and apples, vanilla icing sugar sweetness, tempting honey notes, a background hint of spiced oak.
Taste…Smooth is what comes to the palate first, a sweetness comes from many directions, honey and crème anglaise, pears, Caribbean fruit salad, a mild puff of white pepper, apple strudel, then I find a wee hint of ginger spice and grated coconut in the background, every sip reveals more and more sweet flavours.
Finish…Long and sweet, a creaminess is left on the palate with a gentle spice tingle on the tongue, all being very well balanced.
Well, I was not expecting that. This is a very fine, well balanced and complex blend that invites you to sip slowly and just savour all the sweet and fruity delights.
This bottle will be priced at about £30.00 and that is a steal. This will be part of The Whisky Boys Irish selection. I suggest that it should be part of yours.
I can only congratulate Caroline and her team for the time and effort they all put in to create this blend, they have produced a triumph of an Irish Premium Blend.
I have had a few tastings this week and this one surprised me the most, delightful.
