Irish coffee

Caffeine fix

Bad weather is to thank for the invention of the Irish coffee or Caife Gaelach. In County Limerick, western Ireland, a small town called Foynes (Faing in Irish) was once the last port of call for trans-Atlantic ‘flying boats' or seaplanes.

 

On a particularly miserable evening in 1943, a group of Americans disembarked, chilled to the bone after their gruelling Pan-Am journey, and were served coffee with a tot of whiskey added to help them warm up.

"Is this Brazilian coffee?" one of them asked - and I can easily imagine chef Joe Sheridan's Irish eyes smiling when he replied, "Why, no, to be sure, this is Irish coffee!"

In his original recipe, Sheridan apparently called for "cream as rich as an Irish brogue; coffee as strong as a friendly hand; sugar sweet as the tongue of a rogue; and whiskey smooth as the wit of the land". A description which has me, for one, weak at the knees before I've even drunk any!

It was almost a decade later, on 10 November 1952 to be precise, that a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle brought the Irish coffee to America - and indeed the world.

The splendidly named Stanton Delaplane evidently enjoyed quite a few while waiting for his flight at Shannon Airport, which had replaced the flying boat port (and whose 24-hour bar is now named Sheridan's in honour of the cocktail's inventor). Back home in San Francisco, he immediately headed to his neighbourhood bar, the Buena Vista, to try to recreate it.

Because the hot alcoholic coffee must be sipped through the cool cream, the tricky part was getting the cream to float - and Delaplane was so determined to master the art that he almost died trying. Literally. Late one night, after a few too many failed experiments, he passed out on the cable-car tracks outside the bar!

Suffice to say that he and bar owner Jack Koeppler eventually established that stirring in at least one teaspoon of sugar was necessary to give the coffee the right viscosity, with the cream - thick cream, not whipped - poured over the back of a spoon held just above the surface and then gradually lifted.

The Irish coffee soon became the signature drink of the Buena Vista, which still serves around 2 000 a day - in fact, the bar claims to be the largest single consumer of Irish whiskey in the United States!

Meanwhile, Delaplane punted the drink extensively in his widely syndicated Chronicle column - so much for journalistic objectivity! - and it took off in a big way. Shortly before his death in 1988, however, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer said he couldn't stand the stuff anymore. Too much of a good thing, perhaps?

IRISH WHISKEY RENAISSANCE

Had Stanton Delaplane lived a little longer, he would have witnessed the incredible resurgence of Irish whiskey over the past 25 years.

"It was actually the dominant whiskey until the early 20th century," points out Ian Smart, the UK-based brand manager for The Wild Geese Irish Whiskey. "Prohibition in the States was responsible for its dramatic decline, along with the Irish War of Independence which saw Britain cutting off supplies to the Empire."

Worse still was the damage done to the reputation of Irish whiskey: "It came to be regarded as cheap and somehow inferior to Scotch," says Smart. "But today it is once again holding its head up high, with brands like The Wild Geese leading the way."

Joe Sheridan apparently used Jameson or Powers Irish whiskey in his Irish coffee, while the Buena Vista uses its private brand, Cooley's, which is made in County Lough, Ireland.

The Wild Geese, meanwhile, is a particularly evocative brand, not named after birds at all, but the many Irish who have left their homeland over the centuries - first the Jacobite officers who refused to serve under William the Usurper in 1691, instead fleeing to France to fight for their deposed sovereign, James II; thereafter a steady stream of young men who left to wage battle on foreign soils or simply to make a better life for themselves - after the Potato Famine of 1845-1852, for example.

There are an estimated 80 million people of Irish descent now living elsewhere in the world, mainly and most famously in America. But South Africa has had its fair share of infl uential Wild Geese over the years, including a number who served as Cape governors and had towns named after them: Lord Caledon and Sir John Francis Cradock in the early 1800s, and Sir Thomas Upington, ‘the Afrikaner from Cork', in the 1880s.

The Wild Geese Irish Whiskey differs from other brands in that it is not triple-distilled but rather given an extended double distillation.

"This makes it possible to retain the subtle characteristics inherent in the liquid instead of distilling them out," explains Smart. The whiskies are then matured in white oak Bourbon casks, giving them a complex flavour profile with some notes in common with American whisky.

Presented in a cubic, decanter-style bottle, there are three different expressions of The Wild Geese available in South Africa: a single malt and two blends of malt and grain.

The Wild Geese Rare Irish Whiskey is recommended for use in cocktails, with leading UK mixologists having developed a number of cocktails specifically for the brand - most notably the Five Points and Sarsfield Sour, which are a take on the Mint Julep and Whisky Sour, both classic Bourbon cocktails.

IRISH COFFEE
40ml (2 parts) Irish whiskey
80ml (4 parts) hot coffee
30ml (1½ parts) fresh cream
1t brown sugar

Pour the coffee into a warmed, heat-resistant, stemmed glass (with a wide variety of cocktail glasses available from Crystal Direct).

Stir in the whiskey and sugar until is has dissolved fully. Then carefully pour thick cream over the back of a spoon, raising the spoon as the layer of cream builds up on the surface.

Serve immediately and do not stir - the hot coffee must be sipped through the cool cream.