Fionnán O'Connor

A Glass Apart is essential. It is exhaustive. It is, at this point, also slightly dated--the Irish whiskey industry has changed so much in the last few years that it's inevitable, and the book knows this. That's fine.

The introduction to Irish Pot Still (pure or single, whatever you want to call it) here is paced well. It starts with the basics of production, then gets into the actual tastes that create the style so that the beginner knows what they're working with.

The language is vibrant. Spry, might I say? At times it is a little too much so, bordering on the giddy in discussions of taste, especially. But tasting notes are always an iffy prospect, being so subjective.

After introducing specific bottles, the book moves into history that can only be called complete. It starts from the birth of distillation itself, then moves into the intricacies of colonial tax law, and all the way into the near death and astonishing rebirth of Irish pot still whiskey. The glorious end section with a look at the distilleries that were just being born in 2014, and that are now either pumping out liquid or quietly closing up shop, is particularly exciting. It's a great book.

It's also frustratingly difficult to read. I looked into getting the print version, but saw tons of reviews saying that the print was too small and hard to read, so I got the ebook. Guess what? The print is still too small to read. The publisher made the baffling decision to put the book out as a locked-in layout, so the text can't be resized or reflowed. All you can do is zoom in on the page, leading to fuzzy letters. It gave me a headache to read for too long. So, while the actual content of the book is stellar, the accessibility to that content is a real barrier. Buyer, be aware.… (plus d'informations)