Analysis: how a coffee laced with whiskey, sugar and cream came to be seen as the height of sophistication
From 'a ball of malt' to ‘a pint of plain’, Ireland has often presented its sense of Irishness by the drinks it consumes and also sells. For visiting presidents and dignitaries to these shores, a humble pint is often held aloft to the accompanying media and consumed as a form of initiation test for any would-be visitor’s commitment to their visit.
But what about the Irish coffee? Once seen as a high form of sophistication or even an exotic mix of products and cultures, the Irish coffee has been a staple of Irish restaurant menus for decades. Has it lost its appeal?
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From Foynes Flying Boat & Maritime Museum, tour guide Helen Enright on how the Irish coffee was invented in Foynes in 1943
The history of the Irish coffee dates back to the 1940s and to another era of travel into Ireland, particularly from the United States, via the flying boats of airlines such as PanAm, which landed at the port town of Foynes in Co. Limerick. Following a bumpy flight in bad conditions in 1943, the story goes that a group of weary American tourists were given a coffee with whiskey and sugared cream to steady them by chef, Joe Sheridan. The drink's appeal, and with it, a modern sense of Irishness, would spread worldwide.
A report from December 1958 by John Ross for the City Newsreel programme on RTÉ Radio, hosted by Karl Jones, focused on the busy Christmas shopping period in Dublin city. Tommy Condron, a waiter in Dublin's Dolphin Hotel, spoke about having invented a new type of spoon for pouring Irish coffee, shamrock shaped, (which emphasised the Irishness) and which sped up the process of making an Irish coffee for his tired and thirsty customers. Condron spoke of making over 2,000 per week in his hotel alone.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, December 1958 episode of City Newsreel for RTÉ Radio with item on Irish coffee
In the mid-20th century, the global reach of Irish coffee saw it became another form of soft power in the political and diplomatic stages of international dialogues and trade development. In 1952, cases of Irish whiskey were shipped to a Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg where the Irish secretariat showcased Irish whiskey as "the best in the world". Bottles were accompanied by a recipe for how to make Irish coffee were distributed to delegates at Strasbourg.
By 1957, it was reported that over 1,000 Irish coffees per week were made at one Las Vegas hotel after being introduced there by a visiting representative of Córas Tráchtála Teoranta, a body tasked with promoting, assisting and developing exports of Irish goods internationally. The drink was soon introduced onto the menus of the widespread Brown Derby chain of American restaurants in Los Angeles in the same year.
This was a sign of Irish brands and produce continuing to influence American popular tastes and culture. The American actor and comedian, Danny Kaye, who starred in such movies as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and White Christmas (1954), sampled an Irish coffee in Los Angeles in 1957 and said "there’s nothing funny about this drink, it’s nectar".
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Entertainment, how to make the perfect Irish coffee
The Irish coffee was such a hit that it found its way into cultural references of the time. Ireland’s whiskey-coffee cocktail gave its name to a late night revue show, Irish Coffee, from Dublin’s Pike Theatre in 1958 which was "devised and served" by Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift. A poster advertised "the original recipe for the most delectable drink that has ever crossed the palate" with ingredients of "cream – rich as an Irish brogue, coffee – strong as a friendly hand, sugar – sweet as the tongue of a rogue, and whiskey – smooth as the wit of the land", followed by the instructions on how to make the drink.
Irish Coffee, which starred Trinidadian performer Othmar Remy Arthur, was a musical show that was a fusion of Irish and West Indian cultures and tradition. In the production, Arthur performed a number of Trinidadian calypsos and folk songs, which were interspersed with Irish traditional music and song. Irish Coffee was described as 'an all-musical show putting forth the best in Irish and West Indian singing and dancing'. The instrument selected to represent Irish music was the uilleann pipes and to the play the uilleann pipes in the show was Wexford musician Tommy Reck, known as the best player to use the traditional reed.
Irish Coffee was as an intercultural showcase for modern Irish cultural and theatrical influence, fused with West Indian traditional performance and rituals. The Pike’s staging of Irish Coffee can also be understood to be a post-colonial statement by the mutual embracement of parallel folk and native music and oral story-telling traditions of both Ireland, Trinidad and the Caribbean. The event allowed for alternative performance practices such as musical improvisation by each participating musician:
Irish Coffee consists of . . . ballads of Ireland, the U.S., Brazil, Peru, Mexico and the West Indies. The show is unique in that the singers introduce their own songs in unscripted fashion . . . the only script is by Carolyn Swift who deals in three choruses with everything from Ronnie Delany to Sputnik.
At the interval, you could buy a coffee for nine-pence but it was noted that "naturally without charge at all – a present of a drop of Irish in the coffee." For a production steeped in Caribbean culture and tradition, it was made ‘more Irish’, more authentic, by the addition of a ‘drop of Irish’ whiskey to the imported commodity that is coffee. Within the revue, Arthur composed his own Calypsos and to make the cross-over complete, has a go at an Irish reel while the whole company join him in singing The Sly Mongoose.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, Cathy O'Halloran reports for Nationwide in 1996 on a visit by Hollywood film star Maureen O'Hara to the Irish Coffee Festival in Foynes, Co. Limerick
The Irish coffee’s many legacies were later celebrated in the town which claimed to have first made it – Foynes in Co. Limerick. The International Irish Coffee Festival was an annual fixture in the town, beginning in 1993, and attracted attendees from around the world competing for the title of International Irish Coffee Champion. Maureen O'Hara regularly attended the event and her husband, Captain Charlie Blair, was a pilot of one of the famous flying boats which landed at Foynes in the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the port of Foynes, once one of the most important in Europe in the early 20th century, as well of its famous drink can be traced at the Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum.
Today, Irish whiskey's prime market share appears not to be crossing over into our flat whites. This is despite coffee sales in Ireland and Irish whiskey sales internationally both increasing demonstrably, from small batch boutique roasters and distillers in Ireland, to endorsements from global celebrities cashing in on their own whiskey brand (from Conor McGregor's Proper 12 to American actor Liev Schreiber's Sláinte). Once Ireland’s most fashionable of beverage creation, it might be time for a cultural revival for the Irish coffee.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
