further than across the estuary to a new bar.For in October 1945 the last scheduled flying boat left Foynes, captained by Charles Blair, who went on to marry flame haired Irish actress Maureen O’Hara.After reaching New York he rested and brought the first land plane back across the Atlantic to the new Shannon airport, now home to Joe Sheridan.Fast forward seven years. It’s 1952 and Pulitzer prize winning journalist Stanton Delaplane, no doubt browsing in the world’s first duty free, waited to board the Super Continental propeller, when something caught his well trained nose.He wandered into the bar and ordered an Irish Coffee… then he proceeded to order several more.Again here the details get a bit fuzzy (I blame the sugar) but what is certain is that on his return to San Francisco, Delaplane lit up the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle with praise for the miracle of Irish Coffee. Jack Koeppler and George Freeberg knew Delaplane and read his articles with great interest.They were the owners of The Buena Vista bar (known locally as the BV) and knew this new drink would be perfect to keep out the foggy, chilly Bay area’s winter nights.On one evening the three friends sat up all night experimenting, trying to crack the taste and the look of Sheridan’s creation.By all accounts the session was quite heated, and Delaplane nearly died on the way home when, exhausted by his efforts, he collapsed on the cable car tracks outside. But they had it cracked:“The whole world is going to drink Irish coffee,” Koeppler is reported to have said. “This drink is for the gods.”Irish Coffee was a huge and instant hit at the BV and soon orders were flooding into DeValera’s depressed Ireland.This was a real boost to the ailing Irish whiskey industry, helping some of the smaller distilleries such as Kilbeggan and Tullamore fight off closure for a few years.Even John Jameson climbed aboard the craze, sending literally shiploads of whiskey across the Atlantic.But with Irish coffee came two further problems. The first was cream.The BV had a hard time finding enough heavy cream to whip and ended up taking the problem to San Francisco’s mayor, a prominent dairy owner.After extensive research in to the subject, he discovered that when cream was aged for 48 hours and frothed to a precise consistency, it would float and not sink.The other problem that came with Irish Coffee was more enduring.When American GIs left post Martial Aid Europe, they did so carrying bottles of Scotch under their arms, while in the States, ‘Irish’ became synonymous with coffee, not whiskey.‘Irish’ had been tainted by the sugar, swamped by the cream and drowned by the coffee. Mortally wounded it wouldn’t be till the 1990s that Irish whiskey would finally fully distance itself from Joe Sheridan’s Trojan horse.As for Delaplane? The drink he made famous took over his life.“I can’t stand the stuff anymore,” he said before passing away in 1988 at the age of 80. A special exhibition of Delaplane’s life and work is mounted on wall of the BV.If you are ever in the area, San Francisco’s Buena Vista Café is on Hyde and Beach streets, where the cable cars meet the bay. They are still the largest single consumer of Irish whiskey in the country.Sixty years after its creation, Irish Coffee is now served the world over and it has been joined by a host of imitators. Anyone for French Coffee (brandy), Jamaican Coffee (rum) even the very dubious Gaelic Coffee (Scotch)? Best to stick to the original and as long as the whiskey you use is Irish, the brand is not critical.The original Irish Coffee would have used pure pot still whiskey.However by the 70s, the BV was using a whiskey specially mixed for them by Irish Distillers. Today they use a Cooley blend.Personally I prefer edgier (cheaper) blends, where grain whiskey is really good at cutting through the sugar and cream.In the States Brennan’s is ideal, in Europe for perfect Irish coffee pick any supermarket own-label Irish, or you could go with the times and try a hot Irishman. The Hot Irishman was conceived by husband and wife team Bernard and Rosemary Walsh as a way of simplifying the process of making Irish coffee.
Here in one bottle is (just) about everything you need to make perfect Irish coffee every time… just add water.However they still leave the tricky bit to the consumer, and that’s putting on the floating cream head.Use double (or whipping cream), never the dreadful stuff that squirts out of a nozzle, whip it hardish and pour it onto the coffee over the back of a spoon.Then sit back and enjoy…