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Beers in glasses illustration
The earth we’re from yields crops our tribes turn into beverages. Do the beverages of our tribes make us one with them? Do they bind us to the earth we’re from? And do we experience them differently than those who don’t have our history? Do they identify us?
A holiday like St. Patrick’s Day may make us ask, “Do Irish beverages truly bind those of Irish ancestry to the earth and tribes of Ireland? Do the Irish experience a draught of Guinness and a dram of Irish Whiskey differently?” Here are two Irish voices whose paths have passed through our city.
David DeCosse
An Irish whiskey on the rocks (not too many rocks, for heaven’s sake!) is my little sacrament on a Saturday night—no other hard liquor is as capable as this silken brew of slipping sweetly down the throat and taking me outside of time.
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Whiskey in glass illustration
I’m back in Castletownbere along the sea in County Cork, hustling on a pub run on a black night under brilliant stars in cool summer air. Or I’m listening to Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” and marveling at his majestic poetic strength because how else could he face the anguish of Bloody Sunday and conjure redemption through the image of coffin after coffin coming out of the cathedral like “blossoms on slow water.” Or I’m at Nana’s apartment in Manhattan for her 90th birthday and the whole loud clan erupts in cheers as the birthday card from the White House is opened with good wishes from the President and First Lady and Nana, wits and wit fully intact and Bronx Irish forever, asks, "From Ron and Nancy who?" I sip my little sacrament and am home.
David DeCosse grew up in Milwaukee and hails from people in County Cork and County Clare (Flynns and Sullivans). Proud of his French Canadian and Swedish roots, he nevertheless was shaped most by the culture of his Irish roots.
Martin Dowling
Here in Ireland there can be four seasons in a day, and there are as many drinks here as there are circumstances. But in no circumstance can a Guinness Stout, a drink for all seasons, be surpassed.
I need to be quite specific about this, excluding from consideration the vast ocean of the “the black stuff” consumed from off grocery shelves and in identikit “Irish” pubs around the world. I am referring to a drink pulled from a barrel filled in the St James Gate Brewery on the Liffey in Dublin. Some say Guinness that crosses the Shannon River into the west of Ireland does not survive scrutiny. I’ll not go that far, because what’s essential is not the smooth deep creamy taste. A glass or a pint of Guinness is an event, a happening in a time and a place, not a quantity of 4.2% alcohol with toasted barley and infused with nitrogen.
My first extended stay in Ireland was spent in a tiny row house near the Liberties of Dublin, the neighbourhood where the St James Gate Brewery stands. In the 1980s, coal for the sitting room fire was still delivered on horse-drawn flatbeds. A nun from the convent nearby might bang on the bonnet of your car, jump into the passenger seat, and order you to deliver her somewhere. And the smell of the roasting malt, barley, and hops from the brewery was a constant reminder of what might come at the end of the day in The Bunch of Grapes on old Clanbrassil Street (a pub long since destroyed with the widening of the street for incoming suburban traffic).
Assembled with friends after a day’s work, or a day avoiding work, a handful of pints is ordered. Handed over to the table, they are not ready yet. Nitrogen bubbles are still descending down the inside of the glasses, all is cloudy and confused, until a moment of clarity arrives, and the stuff itself comes to rest in translucent darkness beneath a cream-coloured cap. Silently, with a raised eyebrow here or sparkle of an eye there, the company comes to a consensus. It’s Guinness time.
Glasses are lifted, clinked and then—oh dear, it is unspeakable the pleasure. Conversation lights up, flutes and fiddles may be sprung from their cases, and a few more rounds are inevitably ordered before closing time. But while the cacophony and crack of the night lifts up, the ensuing pints are not quite the same. Years pass, then decades, and it’s all taken for granted, and rushed, and something has gone missing. And some of the people, too, have sadly gone. And just when you might suspect you’re a sucker for a marketing ploy, and it all means nothing, you meet some old friends, and the pub is miraculously quiet, and the light is just right, and you recognize in your friends’ eyes what that moment is all about.
Martin Dowling grew up on Milwaukee’s south side. He is an Irish fiddle player and historian. He learned the violin from Patricia Anders of Elm Grove and Irish history from James Donnelly at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has lived in Ireland since 1994 and has returned to perform at the Milwaukee Irish Fest over twenty times over the years.
