The Best Irish Whiskey Brands To Celebrate St. Patrick's Day At Home

There are a lot of great ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (yes, even from home). From downing corned beef and shepherd's pie to wearing green, you really can't go wrong. But you really can go RIGHT with ONE thing: drinking Irish whiskey. You might be wondering, what the heck makes an Irish whiskey? Well, a whiskey must spend a minimum of three years maturing in Ireland to be considered an Irish whiskey. And we think the Irish know what they are doing, as the first known record of Irish whiskey comes from the early 1400s. And of the more than 30 distilleries making the good stuff, they are made in four different ways—blended, single grain, single malt, and single pot still.

Blended: a combination of a few different whiskeys, typically a combo of barrel-aged malt and grain whiskeys.

Single malt: the whiskey inside the bottle comes from a single distillery.

Single grain: the whiskey is distilled from a grain or multiple grains from one distillery.

Single pot still: the whiskey comes from one distillery and is made in a pot still with mashed malt and unmalted barley.

I'm sure you've also noticed the whiskey vs whisky spelling. To set the record straight, generally it's spelled whiskey with an 'e' in the U.S. and Ireland and whisky, no 'e', in Scotland, Japan, and Canada. You can read more about what makes Irish whiskey different from other varieties here.

So now that you have a little bit of whiskey knowledge, here are the best Irish whiskeys you need to get your hands on before St. Patrick's Day.