A Brief History of Irish Whiskey: Part 2, The Decline

At the start of the 20th century, Irish whiskey was riding high. Uisce Beatha was enjoyed the world over by both the common man and the swell set. But just as Irish whiskey was taking its place in the upper echelon of the spirits world, a confluence of events was coming together to bring it crashing down.

Ireland’s hard and violent struggle for independence from Great Britain came to a head in the early 1900’s. Ireland finally achieved its freedom (mostly) from England in 1921. Most of Ireland, 26 out of 32 counties, became an autonomous, free state in December of 1921. The newly founded Republic of Ireland was met with punitive trade sanctions from its former master, England, immediately. Ireland’s export trade, including its whiskey exports, suffered greatly both from England’s reactionary trade policies and its own status as a newly developing country.
The passage of Prohibition in the United States in 1920 had a hugely deleterious effect on the international liquor trade in general, and the Irish whiskey business in particular. One of the biggest world markets for Irish whiskey went dry for 13 years. The sons and daughters of Eire who yearned for a taste of the ol’ uisce beatha in the USA had to content themselves with whatever could be run onto American shores by bootleggers.
Ireland’s economy, as well as its whiskey industry, suffered a series of setbacks throughout the first half of the 20th century. Ireland may have gotten free of British rule, but that also meant that the small, mostly rural country had to make its way in the international business scene with England actively thwarting its economic progress. The Irish whiskey business dropped off significantly; hundreds of distilleries closed, and only a few survived the culling.
The economic hardship of Ireland led to Irish whiskey becoming severely marginalized in what used to be its largest export market, the USA. After decades of hardship: Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War 2, Americans were ready to live the good life. After the end of WW2, Americans indeed lived it up, sparking a tremendous period of economic growth and prosperity. The booze business boomed after years of lean times. But Irish whiskey was left on the sidelines as Americans took to homemade Bourbon, easily accessible Canadian whiskey, and the Scotch that they picked up a taste for as GIs in the England. Whiskey was big in mid-20th century America, everything but Irish whiskey, anyway. Names like: Jack Daniels, Canadian Club, and Johnny Walker became the standard whiskey calls at bars across America, while names like Jameson and Powers were lucky to be an afterthought. A nation with millions of Irish immigrants and children of Irish immigrants could hardly get their hands of the whiskey of their ancestry.
Every type of alcoholic beverage had its shining moment in America at some point during the post WW2 era. Beer, wine, vodka, rum, scotch, bourbon, gin, and tequila all had their moments in the sun sometime between 1950 and 1990. But Irish whiskey was left out of the party. While choices abounded for enthusiasts of, say, Italian wine or Scotch, Irish whiskey was basically a choice between Jameson or Bushmills for most of the later 1900s. Getting a good dram of uisce beatha in the USA prior to 2000 required knowledge, patience, and dedication. But the Irish are not only used to hardship, they thrive on it, so it was only a matter of time before the many curses that plagued that Irish whiskey business were lifted. Irish Whiskey followed the script for Celtic existence; get beaten to a pulp and pushed to within an inch of extinction before roaring back and becoming everyone’s favorite underdog hero.

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