While I was working in New York on a graduate visa, I would occasionally accompany my friend around nice cocktail bars that I couldn’t afford while he pitched a then-fledgling Irish whiskey brand. We would arrive on a mid-week evening when business was slower and take two stools at the bar. My friend would then ask what the house whiskey was, before brandishing a bottle of his brand’s Irish whiskey for the bar and another for the bartender. Unfortunately for New York bartenders, new Irish whiskey brands have tightened up on free samples in the last 10 years as competition…

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