Jameson’s Secret Garden

Oisin Davis, a long-time lover of spirits and the organizer behind Ireland’s first Dublin Cocktail Week, showed off a thing or two about making memorable whiskey-based drinks.

Oisin got into whiskey through his Irish-American father, though he fell in love with cocktails while living in San Francisco for a year. He credits Sex and the City for a complete turn-around of cocktail culture. (“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” he said. “That show did for spirits…”) He also credits his five-day Bar Smarts experience—an internationally-lauded bartender education course in New York—for “changing his entire point of reference.”

He whipped up three impromptu drinks using Jameson Black Barrel, which has a subtle charred taste from the burned-out barrels the spirit is stored in. Irish whiskey is a mixture of malted and unmalted Irish barley, bearing a pronounced difference in taste from the Scottish tradition of burning peat underneath the grain. When mixing cocktails, Oisin advises counteracting naturally tart qualities, like malic acid, with gentler flavors. “Cocktails are all about balance,” he said. “You can’t get better than balancing sweet with sharp.”

He paired Jameson’s whiskey with locally-grown berries, hand picked from the countryside outside of Dublin. As a rule of thumb, he noted: “booze goes great with natural products that are from the land. It just works. The French were right: that thing about terroir is bang on the money.” There’s an element of chance to using organic elements—”when something is natural, you never know how it’s gonna be,” he remarked. And that’s precisely the thrilling part. SARAH MOROZ

(1) The Wild & Gamy

(featuring two kinds of alcohol, and two local wild ingredients)

-2 oz Jameson Black Barrel whiskey

-1 tsp dry Italian vermouth

-1/3 oz elderberry syrup

-1 tsp rosehip syrup

-1/3 oz “beech booze” *

-2 dashes Angostura bitters

-2 dashes orange bitters

30-second shake in cocktail shaker with ice

Fine-strain, and top with nutmeg

(2) The Blackberry Sloe Sour

(featuring one kind of alcohol with one wild ingredient)

-2 oz Jameson Black Barrel whiskey

-6 muddled blackberries

-.5 oz sloe cordial

-.5 oz fresh lemon juice, fine-strained

-1 tsp egg white (for froth, and velvety mouthfeel)

30-second shake in cocktail shaker with ice

Fine-strain, wait for it to settle

Garnish with sloes and blackberries on a toothpick

(3) The Brookelodge Royale

(featuring two kinds of alcohol, and two local wild ingredients)

-2 oz Jameson Black Barrel whiskey

-1 tsp apple syrup

-2 oz fresh rhubarb, muddled

-3 raspberries, muddled

-1/3 oz lemon juice

-1/4 oz “beech booze” *

30-second shake in cocktail shaker with ice

Fine-strain into champagne flute

Top up with elderflower champagne

Garnish with raspberries on a toothpick

*Beech booze is fermented beech sap sweetened with honey. The nearest equivalent would be honey liqueur, such as mead.