Just in Time for St. Patrick’s Day: Top 5 Irish Brands

Luck of the Irish? Think again. It took a lot of hard work to build these brands to their iconic places in consumer’s minds.

Guinness is a popular Irish dry stout.

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Baileys Irish Cream is an Irish whiskey and cream based liqueur.

Feeling Irish this week? Remember to wear green? Well, just for fun I thought I would send out a list of the Top 5 globally recognized Irish brands.

1. Baileys Irish Cream

Baileys Irish Cream is an Irish whiskey and cream based liqueur originally made by Gilbeys of Ireland and presently owned by Diageo.

Popularly used in Irish Coffees and other mixed drinks, Baileys was created by Gilbeys as it searched for a globally marketable product. The process of creating this brand, and the underlying cream, began in 1971. It would take four years to perfect and bring to market but in 1974 the brand was finally launched. Despite attributions to an Andrew Bailey of the R.A. Bailey Company, no such person actually existed. The choice of the name Bailey was based purely on branding and branding alone.

2. Guinness

Guinness is a popular dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803) at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is based on the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide. A distinctive feature is the burnt flavor which is derived from the use of roasted barley. For many years a portion of the drink was aged to give a sharp lactic flavor, although Guinness has refused to confirm whether this still occurs. The thick creamy head is the result of the beer being mixed with nitrogen when being poured. It is popular with Irish people both in Ireland and abroad and, in spite of a decline in consumption over recent years, is the best-selling alcoholic drink of all time in Ireland.

Arthur Guinness started brewing ales from 1759 in Leixlip, then at the St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin. On December 31st he signed “up to” a 9,000 year lease for an unused brewery. Ten years later on May 19, 1769 Guinness exported his ale for the first time when six and a half barrels were shipped to England.

Guinness is sometimes believed to have originated the stout style of beer. However the first use of the word stout in relation to beer was in a letter in the Egerton Manuscript dated 1677, almost 50 years before Arthur Guinness was born. Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.

3. Jameson Irish Whiskey

Jameson is a single-distillery Irish whiskey. The brand is today owned by the French beverage conglomerate Pernod Ricard. Jameson is similar in its adherence to the single distillery principle to the single malt tradition, but Jameson combines malted barley with unmalted or "green" barley. The most famous component within Jameson is the legendary "Pure Pot Still" component unique to Irish whiskey distilling tradition.

When John Jameson, a Scottish-born businessman, acquired the Bow Street Distillery in 1780, it was producing about 30,000 gallons annually. By the turn of the century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin, at the time, was the epicenter of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum, and internationally Jameson had, by 1805, become the world's No. 1 whiskey. Today, Jameson is the third largest Single Distillery Whiskey in the world.

Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically. Internationally, the Irish war of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth. Shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States imposed further burdens on the export of the now iconic whiskey.

The introduction of basic grain whiskey production using column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid 1800s enabled them to produce vast amounts of almost neutral flavored components for blending with some malt whiskey. This enabled them to create low cost blends that the Irish, still using the original Pure Pot Still technique could not compete with. The differing opinion of what a true whiskey consisted of culminated in a legal inquiry in 1908. It was a huge turning point in the history of whiskey.

The Scottish blenders won the case and the blend became recognized in law as being whiskey. The Irish, in general, and Jameson, in particular, stubbornly continued with the traditional Pure Pot Still production process for many years and, to this day, a large proportion of Jameson is still composed of Pure Pot Still component. Jameson also produces a special limited edition Pure Pot Still Whiskey, Redbreast, to celebrate the ancient Irish whiskey making craft.

In 1966, John Jameson joined forces with their rivals the Cork Distillers company and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. The new Midleton distillery built by Irish Distillers now produces most of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland. The new facility adjoins the old one, which is now a tourist attraction.

Interestingly, the bar that sells the most Jameson whiskey annually is located in Minneapolis (USA). In 2008, the Local Irish Pub in Minneapolis sold 671 cases of Jameson, 22 bottles a day.

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Matthew Swyers is the founder of The Trademark Company, a Web-based law firm specializing in protecting the trademark rights of small to medium-size businesses. The company is ranked No. 138 on the 2011 Inc. 500. @TrademarkCo