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Interview
with Ger Buckley Master Cooper at the
Midleton Distillery.
Following the recent launch tasting of
Irish Distillers new
Method and Madness
whiskey range in Dublin I got the
opportunity to sit down with Midleton
Master Cooper Ger Buckley and put a few
questions to him about what his job
involves at the biggest whiskey
distillery in Ireland.
Cork man, Ger Buckley who began his career in 1977, is a fifth
generation Cooper, a craft which back in
the 1850's employed over 10,000 men in
Ireland but today I believe there are
only four people in Ireland who have the
title Master Cooper. Ger follows in the
footsteps of his own father, also a
Master Cooper, a fact that
he is extremely proud of.
William Morrison: As a Master Cooper at
Midleton, what does your day to day role
involve?
Ger Buckley: On arrival at the site my first job is to record all
the stock movements from the day before,
what was filled, what was emptied, maybe
what was rejected, casks coming in from
the US and Spain are all recorded in the
stock book and then transferred into the
computer.
In what form
do the casks arrive at Midleton?
They all come in standing, they do not
arrive in shook (disassembled) form
anymore because we don't have the
coopers anymore, they haven't arrived in
this form since the big downturn in the
1980s when a lot of coopers finished,
including my own father. Casks from the
US now always arrive standing and
Spanish casks have always arrived
standing. We do an inspection of every
single barrel that arrives on the site,
one of the coopers, usually the other
cooper will examine every single barrel,
a visual inspection for quality, we do a
cask report on every container that
arrives.
In what way
would a cask typically fail inspection?
We get very little failures, it would be
maybe a head is broken or something,
maybe a stave is broken, maybe its
missing a hoop, the failure numbers are
really small, for example last year out
of about 130,000 casks we failed about
80 I think, it is really small.
I would guess
they are inspected before shipping?
Yes, they know what we expect, we pay
the most for our casks so they are the
highest quality and when they arrive
there should be no need for coopering
really. We can get some failures at
filling with new American casks that
have come in, which nobody can see until
you fill the cask and that's when we
repair. There may be a little leak or
movement in the head on transported of
the filled cask but overall the quality
of the casks we buy are so good and that
is why we have so little coopers, we
don't need big numbers.
What part of
your job has changed since you first
started out?
When I first started out it was all
shooks (disassembled barrels), so
for my first 25 years, first thing in
the morning we would build five new
barrels in my first hour and then repair
after that.
How much
automation did you have then?
It was not automated at all, it is still
not automated, we have two machines in
our cooperage, we have a planer machine
and a bandsaw and that's it. Everything
is still done by hand, we still use the
knives to chamfer the heads for example,
so it is exactly the same way that I was
taught by my dad. We don't have a big
industrial cooperage with a lot of
machinery, I have been in cooperages
that have robots and stuff like that, we
have none of that. When we get visiting
coopers in they are pleasantly surprised
to see that it has stayed very much
traditional cooperage which I am quite
proud of and in fairness to Irish
Distillers and Jameson they very much
want to keep it that way.
I know you
import your American barrels from
Kentucky and Tennessee and sherry butts
from Jerez in Spain, do you ever get the
chance to produce a new barrel from
scratch with new wood and would creating
a barrel from scratch be part of an
apprenticeship at Midleton today?
When we did the Irish oak cask going on
10 years ago now, my boss said if we can
get some Irish oak can we make casks
with it. Nobody had any recollection of
using Irish oak, we lost all our oak in
Ireland over 150 years ago. Would it be
possible, would it be very porous, would
it leak, would it be very weak, nobody
knew. We did manage to get our hands on
some Irish oak and I made a 150 litre
cask but the problem in the cooperage in
the distillery was that I wasn't allowed
to light a fire so it had to be a
straight cask, I couldn't bend the
staves, so I did make a cask completely
by hand using a croze, I carved it out,
it had hoops and everything else which
was lovely and it is still in my
cooperage and it has never leaked in the
10 years since I made it and that was
the last time I made a cask completely
by hand. That is something that I will
do with my apprentice now, we will make
some casks now, we may have to go off
site to bend the stave and light a fire
and pull them in because of the
regulations on the site.
I know an
apprenticeship lasts 4 – 5 years but how
many years would you say it was before
you knew you had mastered the craft?
I would personally think that it has to
be over the 10 and on top of that there
is a lot of debate of what is a master
and what isn't in all ranks of society
nowadays and lots of people are calling
themselves masters. Traditionally in
coopering to be called a master,
benchmark wise you have to train an
apprentice, in other words someone has
to ask you to take on an apprentice
because they valued your coopering
skills and then you are officially a
master because you had trained an
apprentices, my dad trained 7
apprentices in his time.
Some coopers, like all trades, don't
dedicate themselves enough, they are
quite happy to repair and are not
interested in putting it any further.
For me, even still today, I am trying to
look at new techniques that people work
with in Syria, Estonia, Scotland, they
achieve the same results but have got
there very different ways using hand
tools and its funny how you can change
when you see things done. So I would
expect someone to become a master after
10 years provided they were still
passionate and dedicated to honing and
learning and still working on their
craft. So there is no guarantee that if
you become a craftsperson that you
become a master. For my apprentice, in
time, maybe around 10 or 12 years we
will see the master that he can make.
Would you say
you are now at a level to be able to say
what a whiskey will taste like in X
amount of years just going by the type
of barrel it will mature in, by that I
mean type of wood, whether it’s been
seasoned, chars of shell and/or heads?
What has happened over time is that I
have become more and more involved
working with my boss in cask selection,
wood type and with a product like
Jameson Black Barrel for example I
go to Kentucky every year and what we do
with that cask is I take out the heads
in Kentucky and we char again, so we do
a double char, its a much more severe
crocodile char so we get a lot more
toasted wood and a lot more sweetness
and vanilla contribution. So it is nice
for us on this side of the world to be
involved in char specifications, be it
light or severe, in toasting instead of
charring, so all that side of it has
become really important and I have got
more and more involved in that instead
of just buying casks in from America or
just buying casks in from Spain, now we
can be more specific with what we want.
If you could
create a perfect single cask Irish
whiskey for yourself to drink, what
would it be? Single pot still, single
grain, a blend? And what type of cask
would it have matured in, first fill,
bourbon, refill, sherry, Madeira, port
or perhaps an innovative creation of
your own to suit your own tastes?
I am very fond of pot still whiskeys, I
think that is real Irish whiskey and
Redbreast 12, Yellow Spot does it for me
those are the ones I have on my shelf at
home. In regards to cask type, what was
really fascinating for me was to start
using Irish oak, its a much richer
grain, I often say to people if you
watch the houses of parliament all the
panelling is Irish oak and its a really
rich type of grain.
I would make it out of new Irish oak
with single pot still and I would be
looking to have it after 12 years. I
think Irish oak even though it a robur
like Spanish oak its more like American
oak, its very sweet, I do also love
American oak. We did bring out a whiskey
called Dair Ghaelach (Pronounced Dar Gay
Lock) meaning Irish Oak which is
finished but in the next 10 -12 years
there will be a whiskey which has
matured full term in Irish oak.
If you were
to pick out a highlight in your career
what would it be?
You know I still learn so much about
forestry, growing oak and what goes on
with the tree, and what tannins are used
for on the tree, and how trees
communicate. To see Irish oak used again
in Ireland is one of the highlights for
me.
Many Thanks
To Ger.
Many thanks
to Ger for taking the time to chat with
me and for giving us an insight into the
world of a traditional Master Cooper and having met Ger's apprentice, Killian O’Mahony
later that evening in Midleton following
a
visit to the Midleton Micro Distillery I would
say Ger has definitely passed on his
enthusiasm and sense of pride in his
craft to Killian who this summer will
become Midleton's first qualified cooper
in over 40 years.
The Method and Madness whiskey range will be available in the UK,
France and Ireland (including Irish
travel retail) from this month at the
respective RRPs of €49, €69 and €79. The
Method and Madness 31 Year Old, Single
Cask, Single Grain will be available in
the same territories from April 2017,
priced at €1,500. Al the of the whiskeys
will be available
from specialist online whisky retailers such as
Master of
Malt
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