Mariah Carey has launched Black Irish, her own brand of liqueur in a tribute to her heritage.

Announcing her range of flavoured Irish cream liqueurs yesterday on Twitter, the singer posted a shot of herself in evening wear on a beach beside a bottle of the new drink and said, "Two years in the making. Truly a cause for celebration".

She has launched the liqueur in a tribute to her mixed background. Her grandparents are originally from Co Cork, and she had a Venezuelan father.

Carey's mother, Patricia Hickey, was an opera singer and vocal coach who was born and raised in US to parents who came from Co Cork, while her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was an engineer of African American and Venezuelan descent.

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The star grew up as a biracial Irish-American in New York and she revealed more about her heritage in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, writing that she was one of three children raised by a widowed Irish Catholic woman.

"To a certain extent, I know how my mother became who she is. Her mother certainly didn’t understand her.

"And her father never had a chance to know her; he died while her mother was pregnant with her", she added.

She described Patricia as a "rebel" and said her mother was disowned by her family after eloping with a black man.

"My mother not only ignored the moral code of her hometown, she rebelled against it, later becoming active in the Civil Rights movement.

"Young Patricia had big dreams - many of which she realised," Carey said.

She has previously spoken of the difficulties she faced growing up as a mixed-race person.

Speaking to The Guardian, she said, "White people have a difficult time with [mixed race]. It's like, my mother's white - she's so Irish, she loves Ireland, she's like, yay, Ireland! Waving the flag and singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. And that's great. I appreciate that and respect it,

"But there's a whole other side of me that makes me who I am and makes people uncomfortable. My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black.

"But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl, I had blond hair and they'd look at me, look at him, and be disgusted," she said.

The Irish cream drink Black Irish will be on sale in three flavours, Original - White Chocolate and Salted Caramel.

The company's tagline reads "a cause for celebration" which takes the lyrics from her hit 2005 song, It’s Like That.