Gold Spot
iHeart Podcast Awards 2024
We recently covered 12 of the best Irish whiskeys to drink now, but there’s another contender that could have made this list. The brand-new Gold Spot The Generations Edition, a whiskey produced at the venerable Midleton Distillery where Jameson is also distilled, is just the second release from this color on the Spots spectrum and the oldest to date.
It’s not just Jameson and the Spot whiskeys that are produced at Midleton—other well-known brands like Redbreast, Midleton Very Rare, and Powers are also distilled and matured at this massive operation outside of Cork. Gold Spot was added to the lineup as a 9-year-old whiskey in 2022, joining other colors like Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green. All of these whiskeys are single pot still expressions, meaning they are made at one distillery in a pot still from a mashbill of both malted and unmalted barley.
The Generations Edition name is meant as a tribute to the Mitchell family, whiskey bonders from the 19th century who sent fortified wine casks to the Jameson Distillery, which was located in Dublin at the time, to be filled. They painted different colored spots on the barrels to indicate the age of whiskey within—blue equaled 7 years, green meant 10 years, yellow signified 12 years, and red indicated 15 years—which mostly carries over to today’s lineup.
Now Gold Spot has returned in the form of a limited-edition 13-year-old whiskey called the Generations Edition, with an Italian twist. The whiskey was initially aged in bourbon and sherry casks and then finished in Valpolicella Classica wine barrels for an additional 16 months that were sourced from the Secondo Marco winery in Fumane. This secondary maturation in Italian red wine barrels gives the whiskey, according to official tasting notes, dark-fruit, berry-compote, a bit of oak, and some sweet-wine flavors on the palate. It was bottled without chill filtration at 46 percent ABV.
Gold Spot The Generations Edition might be a bit difficult to find in the U.S. at the moment, but you can check the Midleton Distillery Collection website to see if you can have it shipped to your address. In the meantime, check out ReserveBar to peruse some of the other Spot whiskeys in the collection.