What’s shakin’, cocktail fans?
Welcome to Episode 182 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast! Thanks for joining me for another interview episode, where we track down the best and brightest minds in the spirits and cocktail world so that we can share their secrets with you. This time around, we’re joined from across the pond by Mary Sadlier, who, along with her husband Philip created Coole Swan Irish Cream Liqueur.
In this passionate conversation with spirits entrepreneur Mary Sadlier, some of the topics we discuss include:
How Mary spun a career in accounting and finance into a crusade with her dairy farmer husband to revolutionize the Irish Cream liqueur category.
Why the assimilative properties of cream make it an excellent canvas for conveying other flavors
How Mary manages to keep her ingredient list smaller and more natural than her competitors.
Ideas for using Coole Swan on your bar menu or in your next at-home cocktail adventure
What to drink when you’re hanging out with Clint Eastwood
And much, much more
One through-line in this conversation is passion fueled by a sense of wonder. Sometimes, when you speak with people who are ostensibly entrepreneurs, they get giddy about spreadsheets and sales figures, and we’re sure Mary secretly nerds out about that stuff since her background is in finance. But, what’s immediately apparent is that, for Mary, it’s all about the juice. She marvels at its purity and its power to bring people together around a shared table, and as we spend our second St. Patrick’s day in a row unable to celebrate with friends in our normal fashion, we can take heart in the fact that Mary and her team are hard at work creating flavor worth celebrating.
Follow Coole Swan on Instagram (@coole_swan), or join their community on Facebook.
This episode’s featured cocktail is the original Alexander. It first appeared in Hugo Enslin’s 1916 book, Recipes for Mixed Drinks and is often overshadowed by the Brandy Alexander, which became popular after Prohibition. To make the Alexander cocktail, you’ll need:
1 oz (30ml) Gin
1 oz (30ml) white Creme de cacao
1 oz (30ml) Coole Swan Irish Cream liqueur
1 egg white
Combine these ingredients in a cocktail shaker with NO ICE. You heard me – no ice. Dry shake for about 15 seconds until you hear and feel the texture of the contents begin to change, then add your ice, shake again, and strain into a stemmed cocktail glass.
This is something like if a Ramos gin fizz and a classic egg white sour cocktail got married and made a baby, and that baby was named dessert. The egg white – in my view – is crucial because it’s going to yield that incredibly silky texture that feels like a delicious reward for having finished your supper.
One last note. This recipe we just gave you is a little boozier than most Alexander recipes, which use only cream rather than a cream liqueur. But, you’re only using an ounce of that Coole Swan, which weighs in at a manageable 16% ABV. In other words, TREAT YO-SELF.
The brand story of Coole Swan is tied to a poem by William Butler Yeats called “The Wild Swans at Coole,” in which the speaker meditates on the cyclical departure and return of a flock of swans on a Turlough – a type of lake endemic to Ireland. The swans, of course, are a gesture to the white color of the product, and the sense of natural renewal is symbolic of the project of Coole Swan: to revolutionize the Irish Cream Liqueur category by getting back to basics and focusing on ingredient quality.
Mary and her husband Philip operate the brand an hour north of Dublin using a 700-head, grass-fed dairy herd as the primary input for the liqueur. The only ingredients in the product besides fresh cream are Belgian white chocolate and Irish single malt whiskey, which flourish against the mildly sweet dairy backdrop.
According to Mary, cream from grass-fed cows provides an excellent flavor scaffold for whiskey and white chocolate. This allows for a product that can be drunk neat or on the rocks, chilled or slightly warm, and combined in a cocktail with any flavor you might find on a dessert cart or fruit basket.
Coole Swan Irish Cream Liqueur was recently awarded a 96 point score from Wine Advocate Magazine and was hailed as one of the world’s Top 100 Spirits Brands by the same publication. The product is also honored with numerous other medals and accolades.
This episode was made possible with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed, Irish Cream Liqueur insights courtesy of Mary Sadlier of Coole Swan, and a little bit of interview magic by yours truly. This has been a Modern Bar Cart production, copyright 2021.
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