Sailor's Home is a new Irish whiskey brand, launched at the tail end of 2020. It's named for the Sailor's Home in Limerick, which was built in 1856 to provide welcome to seafarers and explorers coming through the port.
Sailor's Home don't have their own distillery. Instead, they buy up barrels from other Irish distilleries, then blend the whiskey to their desired flavour profile. They source a range of whiskey styles, including malt, grain and Irish pot still whiskies, matured in a variety of different casks from virgin oak and ex-bourbon to ex-rum and ex-sherry barrels.
You wouldn't want to entrust a complex blending process to an amateur and it's lucky that master blender Jack O'Se is no amateur. A legend in Irish whiskey circles, he has been making whiskey since 1979 and now heads up the whiskey blending at Sailor's Home.
The three whiskies in the current range are quite different from one another: The Journey is the most prototypically Irish in style, being light and accessible. Meanwhile The Horizon is matured in ex-Barbados rum casks and could easily be confused with a rum (in a good way).
Then there's The Haven - our favourite. It starts life in ex-bourbon casks and is finished in oloroso sherry casks, which lends weight, fruitiness and a satisfying chewy quality. The base of this spirit is Irish pot still whisky, which is made from a mash of malted and un-malted barley and oats (which add a creaminess to the texture). The Haven is a brave departure from the flavours you might normally associate with Irish whiskey and that's why we like it.
Truth be told, one of the reasons we like it so much is that it reminds us a bit of scotch.
Really good scotch.
Really good scotch that would set you back more than £50 a bottle - and that's why The Haven, at £42.95 is a bit of a steal.
We hope you like it too.
Use the discount code WHISKYMECLUB10 for 10% off bottle orders.
