With his work as a consultant in the drinks industry taking him all over the globe, Oisín Davis has what many would regard as a dream job. He talked to us about Great Irish Beverages, his new venture Poachers Tonic and his passionate focus on Irish ingredients and produce.
Oisín, how did you get started in the world of beverages?
I was lucky to be in San Francisco in 1998 at a time when cocktails were being reinvigorated and I fell in love with them, so when I opened up the Sugar Club in 1999 I made sure that we had a cocktail programme. Everyone said we were mad but then Sex in the City happened and the world and its uncle wanted to learn how to make Cosmopolitans and Long Island Iced Teas. I was one of the few people in Ireland who knew how to do that, so I was spending Saturday afternoons in Brown Thomas making Cosmopolitans for shoppers and being asked by various brands to go to pubs in Meath to show bartenders how to mix drinks.
Then in 2011 I won a national cocktail competition, and the prize was a five-day intensive cocktail programme in New York. One particular instructor there said, “Whatever your biggest passion is, make that something that you try to improve upon every day”. That was a real eureka moment for me, because what had got me to the competition was using wild Irish ingredients such as blackberries, sloes and wild elderflowers. That’s when I started thinking that we should be using Irish ingredients as much as possible. Now I work with clients helping them innovate on new drinks programmes and strategies but my rule is that they have to be Irish companies and Irish products. I’ve worked with ciders and beers and I’m contracted two days a week to work with Jameson and the Irish whiskey portfolio.
Tell us about Great Irish Beverages and Poacher’s Irish Tonic Water.
In much the same way that Irish people want to see seasonal Irish produce in restaurants, they also want to see Irish products on their drinks menus. I set up Great Irish Beverages to promote Irish drinks within the context of drinks festivals. I’ve worked as a global consultant for Jameson for three years now and that’s given me an opportunity to see the world, visit some fantastic drinks festivals and get some great ideas and inspiration. It’s also given me a sense of how good Irish drinks are, and how good Irish produce is, so Poacher’s has been a progression from that.
We started off trying to create tonic water with as many Irish ingredients as possible. We extract really good Irish spring water from Litterbeg Estate in Wexford, then drive down the road to the bottling company in Enniscorthy, where we process and produce the tonic. We sweeten it with sugar beets, Florida orange and some of the oil from the orange. Irish rosemary is one of the key ingredients and the natural quinine comes from cinchona bark. It’s nice with poitin and it goes really well with white port. We also have places like Liston’s in Camden Street selling it to people who are just enjoying it with their lunch, which I would never have expected.
You have an appearance penciled in at the Electric Picnic. What can we expect to see?
The Jameson graduate programme has 72 ambassadors working all round the planet and over the last few years I’ve been very fortunate to hang out with a lot of them and see some great bars and crazy drinks. I figured it would be good fun to look at some strange drinks from around the world, such as fermented horse milk from Kazakhstan, and look at how people get over those drinks. In Ireland we’ll have a fry, but in Mexico they might bite into an orange that’s coated in salt. So I’ll be in the Theatre of Food at noon on the Saturday talking about hangover causes and cures, aided and abetted by a friend of mine who’s a doctor. That’s about all I can reveal at the moment!
With new interest in food and drink pairing, what skills do you think bartenders need to have now?
It’s great to see Irish restaurants embracing cocktails but if you’re going to be serving people a nice piece of Wicklow rump lamb or wild Connemara salmon you want to suggest an Irish gin martini or a Jameson whiskey sour, not a Pina Colada made with Jamaican rum. So the modern bartender, whether they’re from Ireland or Mozambique, should be able to mix classic drinks, and mix them well. They also need to understand every element of hospitality including food pairing, food hygiene and the different types of drinks that are out there, from micro and macro beers to ciders and cocktails. It’s extremely important that they learn these skills.
What’s your favourite tipple?
I’m very much a seasonal drinker. In winter I really enjoy hot toddies and hot apple punches that I mix with whiskey. Every Christmas I make a mulled apple that I sweeten with date syrup, keep it on the stove and then if anyone comes along I throw a splash of whiskey into a mug and top it up with the spiced apple. I enjoy a gin and tonic in the summer, Irish ciders in the autumn and I absolutely love an Old Fashioned. When I make cocktails on the Tom Dunne show on Newstalk I do my utmost to make sure that the cocktail is either made with Irish drinks or with Irish produce, so in everything I do that’s really important to me. That’s what I really want to see more of, and every time that happens because of a small amount of work that I’ve done, that makes me happy.
To find out more about Oisín’s various festivals, check out greatirishbeverages.com. To find out about Poacher’s Irish Tonic, you can find them at facebook.com/PoachersWell or at @PoachersWell on Twitter.
Words: Martina Murray
Photos: Megan Killeen
