International Irish Whiskey Day Date in the current year: March 3, 2024

Whiskey, also spelled whisky, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Irish whiskey, just like the name suggests, is whiskey made on the island of Ireland. It is believed to have originated around the 12th century. One of the earliest reference to Irish whiskey can be found in the Red Book of Ossory, a 14th-century manuscript produced in Kilkenny. Irish whiskey tends to have a smoother finish than Scotch whisky due to the use of peat smoke for malting and some other differences in the production process.

There are three main varieties of Irish whiskey: single malt (made from malted barley distilled in a pot still within a single distillery), single pot still (made from a mixture of malted and unmalted barley distilled in a pot still within a single distillery), and grain (made from grains other than malted barley distilled in a Coffey or column still rather than a pot still). Blended whiskeys are made by mixing the above styles; most Irish whiskeys these days are blended.

International Irish Whiskey Day was created by Stuart McNamara, a whiskey blogger from Cork, Ireland. He came up with the idea in 2016 when he suddenly realized that Scotch had a holiday dedicated to it, whereas Irish whiskey didn’t. McNamara felt like Irish whiskey didn’t receive enough recognition and appreciation, and that was something that needed to be changed.

He decided to celebrate International Irish Whiskey Day on March 3 for a number of reasons. First of all, it is exactly two weeks before Saint Patrick’s Day, the ultimate celebration of all things Irish. The date 3/3 also pays homage to three main types of Irish whiskey (single malt, single pot still and grain), a minimum of three years of maturation required for Irish whiskey, and triple distillation, as well as three-leaved shamrock and the three colors of the Irish flag (green, white and orange).

For the first couple of years, Irish Whiskey Day didn’t receive much media attention even though McNamara posted about it on his blog and used the hashtag #IrishWhiskeyDay on social media. The holiday began to gain traction in 2020, when The Irish Post published an article on International Irish Whiskey Day that was shared over 100,000 times within just a few days. Since then, Irish Whiskey Day has been going strong.

There are many ways to celebrate International Irish Whiskey Day. You can learn more about Irish whiskey and its peculiarities, go out to your favorite bar and have a glass or two of Irish whiskey, splurge on a bottle of expensive Irish whiskey for your home bar, throw a whiskey-tasting party for your friends where every attendee is supposed to bring a different Irish whiskey, and spread the word about the holiday on social media with the hashtags #IrishWhiskeyDay and #InternationalIrishWhiskeyDay.