A note on the latest extension of the Jamesons brand.

Jamesons has been the most popular and best known Irish whiskey for decades now. Nobody who would describe the brand as iconic could be accused of exaggeration. Its success should not infer that it is a particularly good product. The whiskey is produced at factory scale by the state owned distilling complex that until the recent explosion of craft distilleries in the Republic of Ireland monopolized whiskey production.

Not that Jamesons has been the exclusive vehicle for Irish bunkum when it comes to whisky. A number other brands churned out by the same big factory under sentimental Irish names conjured by the unimaginative marketers who target a credulous American market.

The success of Jameson should not surprise anyone. As the runaway popularity of Bud Light (‘dilly dilly’) attests, consumers of beer and booze lured by promises of ‘richness, ‘depth’ and ‘complexity’ in fact often favor flavors that are plain and bland, nearly nonexistent, instead.

And so the sweet cast of Jameson is cloying, its flavor insipid, its texture thin. The twelve year old version along with single malt and other more expensive variants of the base brand are not much better. Jameson remains a distant runnerup to its northern rival Bushmill’s, and especially its Black Bush in terms of big brand quality. That should not be interpreted as a backhanded compliment to Black bush: It remains excellent value for money across the entire whiskey, and for that matter whisky, world.

Jameson now has introduced several “cask mate” versions. One of them spends time in barrels previously used to store India Pale Ale; another, appropriately, stout.

Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition

Each is an improvement on the original that should strike scant fear in the competition. The IPA caskmate represents a slightly better iteration of primary Jamesons, not as light, a little smoother and displaying some more depth. The stout version is better, or less bad, still. It offers pretty much the same improvements of the IPA cask as the IPA offers over the original whiskey. It is something like the base Bushmills without its faint hint of chocolate.

These two caskmates are decent enough, neither worth looking for.