GINGER FLANDERS: “Think you can Irish up this coffee for me?”
Ned Flanders: “Whoops, watch the swears, honeybear. We don’t use the I word in this house.”
In American English, “Irish” is synonymous for “drunk.” For better or worse, drinking is what we associate with the Irish and St. Patrick’s Day, along with the color green, potato famine, and Patrick banishing all snakes from Ireland.
Fun fact: St. Patrick’s Day falls during Lent, but traditionally, the Lenten dietary restrictions (including restrictions on alcohol consumption) are lifted to celebrate Ireland’s favorite saint. This might explain the rowdiness of the American version of the holiday, especially in heavily non-Catholic areas, where “loosening restrictions on how much you can drink” isn’t a religious move, but a physiological one.
One of the most common uses of the I word is as a modifier for the words pub or bar. My Irish whiskey research for this column took me to my local whiskey bar, the Old Gold, where Andrew Finkelman teaches Whiskey 101 and Whiskey 201 courses. We were joined by Old Gold proprietor and the Portland Mercury’s favorite bad penny, Ezra Caraeff, who pointed out that Ireland is probably the only country that has themed bars in every other country.
“You can spend the day hiking in Costa Rica and then go to an Irish pub and get a Guinness,” Caraeff says. “It’s everywhere.”
Finkelman gave me a brief history of Irish whiskey.
“In the 1600s and 1700s, Irish whiskey was whiskey—the tsar of Russia drank it,” Finkelman says. “Even in Scotland, they were drinking Irish whiskey.”
The Irish made whiskey in copper pot stills, and for the most part, they still do. It’s harder and it takes longer than distilling in a column still, so naturally it’s the Irish way.
