- Erevan O'Neill, Clonakilty Irish whiskey for "My Favo rite Irish..." Fáilte ar ais. Welcome back to the bar. I've got a Cork man with me, with me today. Erevan, great to have you here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yeah, no, we've been working on this for a while to get you to the bar and here you are. So we have a Cork man and a Cork whiskey.

- It's pretty shameful. It took a while to get me to a bar as an Irishman to start with.

- So, first things first, You probably have one of the most unusual names that, that I've come across. You know, it's not a traditional Irish name, so to speak. So Erevan, E R E V A N. Lots of, lots of vowels in there for the vowel lovers. Where'd it come from?

- Yeah. Well it's, like, it's an old Irish name and like most Irish things there's a long, sad story, but the abbreviated version is, it's an anglicized version of Érimón Also known as Heremon. And he was the first High King of Ireland and he came of the Milesian line. There were blow-ins from the north of Spain and the, the brothers fought each other and eventually Érimón had this stone of destiny: the Lia Fáil, and he became the first High King. But it was actually the derivation of Erevan came from Cape Clear, the island off the southwest of Ireland. And there was a name my father had found when he was fishing, I believe.

- And he just, he liked the sound. And he didn't know the story behind it. He got the story from a grand-uncle of mine. He was, he's a historian and he told him the stories of the Milesians. But...

- So how was it going to school with an unusual name like that? Was it?

- Well, in Ireland, people bastardize your name, whatever it is. And yeah. Actually I found in America, Americans get my name better than the Irish do.

- So I'll tell someone in an Ireland, My name is Erevan. "Right, Irwin. Gotcha."

- Irwin?

- Yeah, Irwin is usually what it is because I think that's actually another anglicized version of Érimón.

- So but growing up it was fine. It was always one that people stumbled over. And it's great for me because I'm terrible with people's names in the first place and it gives me a good excuse because they'll never know my name. So I can always be the one that'll be...

- I would've thought it would've been the opposite with a name so unusual that it would stick with people.

- It does. But they always have to come back and ask again. "How do you pronounce it?"

- And, and you're one of how many kids?

- There are three in my family. I have a sister and a brother.

- Do they have equally historical names?

- Nope. James and Kelly! Yeah. So yeah, James is my, is an older brother and Kelly's a younger sister and we're all scattered. Kelly recently returned from Perth. And she's living at home in...

- Perth in Western Australia.

- Western Australia, yeah. Yeah. That's where my brother James is.

- And I'm obviously here in California.

- And I know that you got to spend some time back in, and we should let people know that home, of course is, is Cork, but actually more specifically West Cork.

- West Cork is a completely different county.

- It is.

- And West even more so than Clonakilty is. So we are, we are two hours west of Cork City and a little fishing village called Castletownbere in the Beara Peninsula and the best place in the world to grow up as a kid and the best place in the world to visit. And if you're, if you're able to live there, it's a wonderful place to live. But it's, it's isolated.

- Okay.

- "Castletownowhere" where, it was where my, my college buddies called it and it's out there, but it's a wonderful place to live. And being in West Cork, it's almost more of a state of mind than a place. Which represents West Cork in general.

- And how does that fit in with, because growing up we, we used to joke that, you know, Cork was, its the Republic of Cork is West Cork, its own entity.

- That Cork is split into its competing individual internal republics. And West Cork is completely different from East Cork and Cork City. And, but ultimately once you're in Cork, you're in Cork. That's it.

- Yeah.

- That's all that matters.

- It's a Cork frame of mind. And folks won't know this, but you're a neighbor of ours here, lived just down the hill. I've known of you longer than I've known you. Did some work with your, yeah, with your in-laws way back when.

- That's right. That's with Albert and Kim. I did a little bit of consultancy work with them back in the day and knew of you because they'd said their daughter had married a Corkman. You were living in San Francisco at that time, but you're now up here in Napa. So got out of the big smoke to come up here.

- Yes. Typical immigrant story to this part of the world. Just drawn to San Francisco and found it and said, Hey, that's it for me. I'm here now and why would I want to live anywhere else? And it's all well and good when you're, you're single and young, but as life goes on, kids come along and the dynamic changes and moving to Napa has been the best thing we ever did. Honestly. Love it here in Napa. I still have one foot in the city.

- Yeah.

- My business is in the city. So it started, we came out 2003 when I first came out. And 2005 by the time I figured out how to come out here legally.

- Shh.

- So, but ever since then, it's been no looking back. And San Francisco, Napa, it's all, it's all that same to me.

- And and you have a, you say one foot in the city, so you're a structural engineer.

- That's correct.

- By trade, you have your own business.

- Yep.

- Which is, having mine here in California being self-employed is obviously, it's a badge of honor. It's a state in which being a business owner can be challenging.

- Yeah.

- For many reasons. But yeah, you're structural engineer and you're proudly wearing your, your logo'ed wear, which we'll take a picture of. So yeah, you worked on some fun projects.

- Yeah. As my father-in-law says, I'm an "entremanure", which means I get stuck in everything, at every part of the business. But yeah, for me, I was always going to be the type of person that would do my own thing. And I came out here, worked for a few years. As soon as I got my license, I turned the box upside down. So the year I got my license, a year after that we got pregnant with our first kid, Maya. And that was 11 years ago and I quit the company I was working with, started ONE Design literally the same month Maya was born. And there's been no looking back ever since.

- Some people would call you crazy for doing something like that.

- Well, if I grew up in a place like this, I'm crazy to begin with. So I've been told I've been crazy for a long time. So, but yes, definitely a lot of craziness there. But being in San Francisco, being an engineer, a structural engineer and dabbling in a bit of architecture as well.

- Okay.

- I, it was easy. It was a natural transition. There's a great Irish community in San Francisco and they pulled me up and I'm ever so thankful for everything that they've enabled me to build and I'm happy to celebrate 10 years in business as of last year and still going. So it's been, it's been a heck of a ride.

- Yeah.

- Yeah. It's been up and down, but always more ups than downs and I'm just delighted I've been given the opportunities that San Francisco and California has given me. So it's been, it's been wonderful. I'm very thankful for it.

- And you mentioned the Irish community there. I know you, you and I have talked about the, the Irish Cultural Center there in the Sloat Avenue area. They're looking to make some significant changes and upgrades there and and they seem to be moving along with it.

- They are, they're moving along at a great pace actually. Yeah. It's a very bold plan and it's a very ambitious plan and it's a very exciting plan. So what they've proposed there is a huge overhaul of the property. They've got the planning department on board.

- Good.

- I was Mr. Skeptical at the start telling them, I don't know if city planning is going to sign off on this and because my business is planning and getting permits and entitlements and I know enough to be dangerous as they say. So, but they said nope, they had it all sewn up. It's all good. Ready to go. And I think it'll probably be a few years before the entitlements come through,

- Okay.

- But it's representative of where the Irish community is right now in San Francisco and that things need to be shaken up a little bit. And the Irish community is not what it used to be for immigrants coming out nowadays, but it is still in a very important part for the diaspora here in San Francisco. Particularly when you're coming out. I mean, it's different now. It's not like you go out there looking for a job. Like you would've 20 years ago and even when I came out, I was kind of on the cusp. Like, we would've gone out there, but not as often as....

- And you say, "Gone out there." The place is out there.

- It is out there. Yeah.

- Yeah. No, it's, we drove by it a couple of times when we went to play a round of golf down there at Harding Park. You know, it's down there in the foggy, foggy southern, southern reaches.

- It is. Yeah.

- So it's an exciting new rebranding of what they're offering.

- Great, Great. So whiskey, we, could chat probably all night as we have done in the past. So I'm going to pour some whiskey in your glass and mine. We both had birthdays with zeros in them through, through the pandemic. And we would, we would stand our few feet apart in the neighborhood and chat. And I told you that I had a five in front of my zero and you dropped by a bottle of Jameson as a birthday gift for me couple years back. And I returned the favor this year cause you had a birthday with a, with a four in front of your zero. So, and I, as people know, Redbreast was my gateway into this part of the journey. So we've drunk way too much Redbreast and I hadn't drunk Jameson for a long time. We ran out of Redbreast one night. I cracked that bottle of Jameson. And I have to say I was very surprised and taken by for such a, you know, a commercial and well distributed whiskey, how great it was. So thank you for the 50th birthday present, which got me back drinking Jameson again. So.

- Thank you.

- So West Cork, I've got a bottle of West Cork here on the shelf as well, which is great because it has a map on it.

- Yeah.

- Which again, you said, you know, you're, you're kind of in your own Republic out there, but so where, whereabouts is, whereabouts is home on this bottle.

- So on this bottle here, the southwest of Ireland, this is the Beara Peninsula and Castletownbere is right out there.

- Okay.

- And it's about almost an hour. It's probably a good solid hour west of Skibbereen where this is made.

- Okay. And from Clonakilty?

- Skibbereen is probably about 10 or 15 minutes from Clonakilty. At least the last time I drove there. Who knows now, the roads might be better, but Skibbereen is a good 45 minutes from west of Cork City.

- Okay.

- So it's out there and, and I like, the first time I'd seen West Cork whiskey was actually in Whole Foods here. And I was like, what the heck is this doing here? And then I see these little name places, like there's all these little tiny townlands like Rodeen and Droum and all these little places. And it's something I want to learn more about as part of the next step in my whiskey....

- In your whiskey journey?

- Yeah. Yeah.

- I think it's great that we, you know, here is a distillery, localish to where you grew up. Like this. I've got a bottle of Fercullen here from Powerscourt, which is local to where I grew up. You know, this didn't happen when we were growing up. There was no distilleries down the road. So I'm loving this, this new renaissance in Irish whiskey.

- A hundred percent. Yeah. Like you, like you said there, it's like what? Is there more than 51?

- Just over 50 now.

- Yeah. And a couple years ago it was like three or four in a short period of time. That's, it's really great.

- Yeah, it is. So let's put that back on the shelf. I've poured some of your favorite Irish here, which is from the Scully family in Clonakilty. Clonakilty was historically better known for its puddin'.

- Yeah. It's true.

- It's black and white pudding. I haven't been to Clonakilty for an awful long time. Have you, have you been there in your travels recently?

- Last time I was in Clonakilty was probably about 10 years ago, I'd say. Just driving through. But yeah, it's, it's a wonderful town. It's probably changed obviously like everywhere else, but it's my memory of Clonakilty: It's a great town, a small town, yet a big town in the scene of West Cork and there's a great little pub down there called De Barras Pub. And we'd many a good night down there that we would've, when we were in college years, we would've taken a day trip down to...

- Day trip!

- Down to Clonakilty. Yeah. And lot of happy memories. A great place, lovely part of the world. Very pretty. People, very friendly, all football rivalries aside, you know, people still very friendly to Beara folk.

- Okay.

- Even though we'd be competitors of theirs.

- In the, in the Cork championship?

- In the Cork championship and it's all football down there. There's no, no hurling, very little hurling anyway, so.

- Okay. Right. Let's. Oh, we should Sláinte.

- Sláinte!

- Yeah, it's lovely to have a Cork man and a Cork whiskey at the bar. Yeah, lovely. It's a lovely attractive nose on this one.

- Oh yeah, it's lovely. Smooth.

- So from what I know about this one, it's a grain whiskey so made from predominantly corn and if I'm wrong, happy to be corrected, but what they've been doing a great job of is their finishing. They finish it in all these fun different barrels and this one's finished in a bordeaux cask barrel. So, so yeah. Adds a little bit of extra character to it. So, And weighs in, you know, you and I talked before about, you know, the alcohol front. This one weighs in at 43 and a bit. 43.6abv And in my opinion, it just gives the flavors a little lift. Just that extra little bit of alcohol.

- And you're able to purchase that here locally or...?

- Yeah, I, I bought this up in Oregon. And obviously, you know, you and I have shared some whiskeys and this is one that you really fell for.

- Yeah.

- So, so yeah. I know that Sean Scully from the family lives up in Portland, so they have big distribution up there. So yeah, they're big up in Oregon. I'm not sure which other states they're strong in. They are here in California, but you won't see them in every store like you do up in Oregon. So yeah, lovely nose. Now just lovely and attractive.

- Yeah, lovely and smooth and sweet. For me as a novice at this and a gateway whiskey, this is a great early novice whiskey I think for, for someone with a sweet tooth.

- So you've, you've told me as we've talked over the last, you know, weeks and months and years that you'd like to have your whiskey with some chocolate.

- Yes actually! I'm slightly embarrassed to say.

- You shouldn't be.

- I find that the flavor of both get enhanced. The chocolate. Chocolate and raisins.

- Okay.

- It brings the flavor out in raisins, the really sticky, caramelly kind of texture and everything. A little bit of popcorn actually.

- Whiskey and popcorn?

- Walnuts and raisins though. That's my kind of go-to little snack while I'm watching TV.

- So here, here's a technical question for you on the chocolate front. So would you chew, bite and swallow the chocolate so there's still some of it in your mouth and then have the whiskey or would you have it in the, your mouth when you're, you're sipping the whiskey?

- I have it in the mouth when I'm sipping the whiskey. Swirl it around.

- Interesting.

- Little uh, it's beautiful and delicious.

- So I'm working on a chocolate whiskey project and I, when I get to the far end of it, I will, will have some fun with whiskey and chocolate.

- Yeah and different, I'm not a black chocolate, a dark chocolate fan. But with whiskey it's amazing. I love it. So just, it's opened up new, new little avenues.

- That's lovely. Goodness, isn't it smooth?

- Yeah, it's delicious it's, it's not too big that it's filling your nose or anything like that, but you know, it's there.

- Yeah. Soft. I think it's lovely and soft in the mouth. Yeah. I'm going to add a couple of drops, not that I need to, because I, I just. Not sure if you want to take a couple of drops? Just see if it softens up and changes the flavor a little. Yeah. So from everything I've read obviously the Scully family they're going to be releasing their own whiskeys very soon. I believe that this is ultimately going to be discontinued here in the states. So you don't know this yet, but you'll be taking this bottle home with you to enjoy.

- Oh! Reluctantly, yeah?

- I twist your, twist the other arm. So, so I know we were both back on the auld sod this summer. You got to spend more time than me there. You were back for back for a bit.

- Almost a month. Yeah. And true to Irish form, it lashed rain for the first five days solid. And there was three or two, four year olds and a six year old and a 10 year old running around the place in the pouring rain. And but after that Ireland shone for us, you know, we've been really lucky, generally is, like I said before, there's no better place in the world to visit. And when you go back in summertime to be able to go out and have a game of golf, round of golf after dinner, it's wonderful.

- Well that's because it's brighter later.

- Yeah.

- Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember that growing up you'd be still out at 10 o'clock on a, in mid-June into July.

- Yeah. And in, in West Cork we're proud of the fact that we're right at the edge of the, the one hour time zone. We really should be in a different time zone to Greenwich. Mean Time.

- Should have your own time zone in Cork.

- Yeah, we should. Yeah, definitely our own.

- And and you mentioned a number of kids ages there, I think you were back there with, with the cousins from Western Australia.

- Yeah, so there was Australian accents, there was California accents running around Rodeen. In fact, one of the tiny little townlands there that's mentioned in the, the label of West Cork. So yeah, it's wonderful to get back to, to see family and just to have the kids run around in the freedom just to with a small little farm there and to be able to go and say, "Go out now and run around for yourself and knock your yaya's out." And there's, well we're sitting back at the house, so it's, it's great. And we, we make a point of to try and go back every year, obviously with the pandemic it was very hard. That was the first trip back in a couple of years.

- Yeah.

- So, but every summer we try and go back and go back for at least three weeks.

- Good on the rest of the family for being there as well and the cousins connecting because it's a long way from here to Western Australia.

- It sure is. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's, it's one thing getting to Ireland, it's another thing getting to West Cork. So, but the...

- Roads are better than when we grew up.

- Certainly! Yeah. Yeah. It used to be a seven hour drive to, to Dublin when I was there.

- Really?

- Yeah. Halfway point was Fermoy and...

- Wow.

- ...that's now a three and a half hour drive, like, or depends on how much you're speeding, but it's, it's four hours to, to Dublin from, from Castletownbere now.

- Really? That's a massive difference.

- Huge difference. Yeah. Yeah.

- Yeah. No, things have definitely changed, obviously, you know, infrastructurally, you know, things have changed. We talked about whiskey changing as well. It's um, goodness.

- Yeah, it's beautiful whiskey. Very, very easy. Yeah, you can, this is this, you've got lot of different flavors. The little vanilla, little cherry and it's yeah.

- Yeah. You're right on the cherry front, there's a, like a dried cherry character in there. This won't last long when it gets down the hill.

- No, no.

- Good, good. So as you know, we were just, we were just back in Ireland as well this summer. And I caught up with the lads that I grew up with. We were, we had a fun weekend in, in The Hauge in the Netherlands and talked about many things and one of the things we talked about was Poitín. Cause I told them that, you know, we now have legal Poitín in Ireland. Here we are taking out more bottles on the bar. But you know, we got Mad March Hare here and we've got some, some Glendalough Mountain Strength. So I hadn't realized how every house has a Poitín story. You know, I, I know where my folks used to acquire, at least I think I know where they used to acquire it from back in the day. And I know where it was stored in, in, in, you know, in the cupboards, in the kitchen. You've got some Poitín stories to tell.

- Yeah, I mean, like you said, every house has one and growing up on a farm, there's a lot more uses for Poitín than there would be in a south Dublin house. One of the main uses that I've ever seen my dad use, I think he used to take a tipple every now and again, but it was for the animals...

- Really?

- Put on, if there was an animal that had a sore wound or something like that, he'd put it on it.

- Okay?

- And whenever cow calfed it was a couple of drops into the straw as well and just to give the cow a little bit of a, of a pep as she was recovering. But yeah, it was, I'm not... I found out where he was getting it from.

- Okay.

- And we, we diddled a little bit in it ourselves as, as young fellas, but it's, back then there was no regulation like I think there is now.

- So you, you were at a young age, you were showing your entrepreneurial spirit?

- Well, yeah, the, the gentleman that he's no longer with us. So I, I feel a little safer to say this, but he was obviously making it illegally at the time. And we, being young fellas that were up to no good, knew where he was making it and where he was stashing it. So as young fellas would, when my buddy would come up and we'd go on a little hike down to the river, found it, and...

- The truth's coming out now.

- We shall we say we, we had a lot of good times... in that. We knew he couldn't say anything about it. So it was almost a victimless crime as far as we were concerned. So we filled his bottles up with water, emptied out the Poitín into our own bottles and took off with it and sold it to a lot of good punters in the area for the next, I'd say there must have been about five years later, we still had some Poitín.

- Really?

- And we were selling it, but it paid for a lot of my misspent youth. Yeah, it's, but you know, it's like anything alcohol related, you know, it's, it's dangerous stuff in the wrong hands. And you know, we were lucky enough, we were, we did some silly things, but you know, we've...

- These are obviously the days before Facebook and Instagram and mobile phones.

- Thankfully.

- Which a lot of us are grateful for.

- Yeah. I mean, I look poor Maya, how is she going to get away with anything? Now we know where she is at all times from her location. So yeah.

- She's not going to be down the creek here stealing someone's stash of moonshine.

- No, but I hear there's a good venture to be had in this creek now. There's a, there's a drain pipe that goes all the way up to Buhman.

- Okay.

- That our, our neighbor used to climb in when he was 10.

- Okay.

- Yeah. Half a mile up the road and a drainpipe, a four inch or a four foot diameter.

- At least you'll know where she is.

- But at least I'll know where to find her, because there won't be reception in the drain pipe. So I can go look anyway now, I know to look.

- Right, we should wrap up. So raise a glass.

- Thank you. I finish mine already.

- We'll Sláinte anyway to, to your health and yeah. So yeah, we will, we'll keep, we'll keep sipping and we will see you next time.

- Thank you.

- Well done. Yeah, great story. Great stories.

- You might have to edit it out in case there's any incriminating evidence, but...

- The man's dead.

- There's no, there's...

- Unless his family come looking for you for stolen Poitín back in the day.