I’ve never quite understood the idea behind the Mickey Finn name. Yeah, it sounds Irish, but it really means a drink served to someone to knock them out (typically to take advantage of them in some way). Why you’d name your Irish whiskey brand after such a thing, I have no idea.

Mickey Finn makes an Irish whiskey (really, it’s made in Dublin) flavored with green apples (“natural apple flavors,” as the label explains). What’s the big idea with this? It is “fanciful,” also as the label suggests, to believe that in the Prohibition era whiskey was smuggled into the U.S. in apple barrels. I’m not sure how that translates to putting apple flavor into the whiskey itself, but I get the homage at least.

Mickey Finn looks like apple juice and tastes like what would happen if you put Apple Pucker into Irish whiskey. It is as difficult to drink as it is to fathom, two flavors that have no business being in the same glass together. The apple is overwhelming here, sour and chemical in character. The whiskey, barely there at all, almost a sweetish afterthought and hardly anything you’d identify with any authority.

Is this something I just “don’t get” or is it just the latest bad idea to come out of whiskeydom? You be the judge.

70 proof.

D / $24

Mickey Finn Irish Apple Whiskey

$24

2

Rating

2.0/10

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