Jameson Triple Triple: Your Comprehensive Bottle Guide

St. Patrick’s Day is marching right towards us, and you’d better believe Americans are going to drink a lot of Irish whiskey this month. Also, so much more Guinness than you would have ever believed possible. Fortunately for anyone fearing that their favorite Irish tipple might run out, Jameson is here to help with the release of an expression you haven’t had before: Jameson Triple Triple. The bottle isn’t quite new (more on that in a second), but it’s enjoying its first widespread release.

The venerable distillery kindly sent us a bottle to compile this ultimate guide to the new(ish) introduction to the Jameson family line. Turns out, it’s hiding even more interesting production secrets than you can glean from its name. Read on to learn more about this bottle’s history, contents, taste, and the best ways to enjoy it.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

Jameson Distillery has been around a long time — almost as long as the United States! When your whiskey goes all the way back to 1780 it would make sense to stick with what works — especially when what works has made you the world’s No.1-selling Irish whiskey brand.

Nevertheless, this whiskey maker is looking to the future, not going back to the 18th century. Surprisingly, its latest drop has actually been available for purchase before, but sales were reserved only for duty-free shops. So, we can say that this 2025 U.S. release makes it something of a general release debut for this label. 

The original hidden gem was well-received by world-wandering whiskey drinkers, and so it has graduated to a wider release. The one-time rarity also appears to be going for the same price as in airports, running somewhere between $26 and $50, depending which outlet you buy from. It will be available nationwide to most Americans looking to upgrade their St. Patrick’s Day menu.

It’s always nice to meet a whiskey with a beautiful bouquet, and this is Triple Triple’s greatest strength. The aroma sails on the stiff wind of clover honey and sweet herbs, and this might be the only whiskey I’ve had that smells like an unadulterated mint julep. Beyond that, you’ll find tangerine and vanilla that blend into a creamsicle-like combo. The taste is incredibly mild and offers more of a tingle than a burn. That triple distillation really does make a smooth product. Suddenly, it glides into a mild sunflower seediness with just the right amount of fattiness and bitterness. I can’t conclude if that’s the chestnut’s contribution, giving it woody notes without going overboard, or maybe it’s just the three times oak exposure to the surface area.

However, I’m not a great fan of the finish as the whiskey goes to different places than the nose suggests and goes furthest from its signature sweetness. The longer you hold it in your mouth, the longer it builds woody flavors in the least preferred way. As it warms it becomes sour and bitter. On a positive note, the finish gets a little more intense with a drop of water that seems to unify the mouthfeel and make the drink more consistent. The negative elements play straight into the positive ones. If you like cinnamon in your whiskey, it’ll open on the nose here. I found this whiskey to be most palatable, if regrettably squashed, on the rocks.

Jameson Triple Triple is the first whiskey from the famed Irish distillery to be both three times distilled and triple-casked. This means it has gone through a series of stills to clarify its essence, and it has then been rotated through three types of cask, each conferring its own characteristics onto the liquor.

Irish whiskey brands are often triple-distilled, and in fact, regular Jameson is one of them. Rather than providing the whiskey with an intense strength or even purity, it’s actually done to clarify certain flavors and smooth out the drink, essentially trimming (or adding) strong characteristics from the beginning and end of each distillation. Think of it as the editorial pass on a batch of whiskey distillate. The end result is a smooth Irish whiskey at a very amicable 40% ABV.

Besides triple-distillation, this whiskey is made with a unique aging process where the spirit is exposed to three types of barrels. Jameson chose bourbon and sherry casks, which are somewhat familiar in whiskey production, but Triple Triple is very notable for the last step in which the spirit is finished in chestnut casks.

If you love oak and hate how easily it goes overboard, try Triple Triple neat for a mild exhibition of the wood’s strength. Additionally, this will let you experience the chestnut notes as the master blender and master cooper intended. Even if you prefer Triple Triple another way, it’s worth trying one straight just to experience how chestnut works differently than oak.

Triple Triple might best justify its existence when served neat to exhibit its strengths, but it’s perhaps most palatable on ice. It really lets you appreciate its strengths as it speedwalks through the weaknesses. Beware, when served on the rocks, this whiskey pulls those strengths towards the middle, losing its biggest idiosyncrasies. Ultimately, I feel serving it on the rocks is the most satisfying way to enjoy Triple Triple, but I have to admit it’s the most damaging to the profile, as it stretches the flavors at each stage. The ice flattens the nose and salvages the tail at the cost of killing all the interesting flavors.

The one thing you shouldn’t bother with is a drop of water, as it’s too much for the weaknesses and not enough to boost the strengths. It will simply intensify what detracts from the neat edition while diminishing its best qualities, offering only mild cinnamon in trade. Perhaps the best use of Triple Triple is experimenting with it in straightforward cocktails to offset its playful characteristics.

Black Barrel is probably the most obvious label to compare to Triple Triple within the Jameson family. Both labels come at a similar price point and lean into distinctive nuttiness. Just like Triple Triple, Black Barrel also takes the Jameson template to a richer degree.

And yet, there are big differences. Black Barrel goes for mature complexity and tips the balance from regular Jameson towards a greater percentage of single-pot whiskey used in the blend. It’s an elder statesman, while Triple Triple clarifies its flavors at a relatively young age. Black Barrel delivers somewhat of a dessert-like sweetness, while Triple Triple’s clover and honey nose reveals more nuttiness and spice complemented by citrus overtones.

If your local outlet sells Triple Triple for around $50, which is close to the standard price of Black Barrel, I’d say the negligible price bump is worth the upgrade  to Black Barrel. However, if Triple Triple comes at around $20, you’re probably going to consider it a better deal and take the newbie home.

Triple Triple stands out from similar whiskey labels mostly for the use of chestnut casks in the production. Along with chestnut, the trio is completed with bourbon and sherry casks, but unlike chestnut, these two options are common in Irish and Scotch whisk(e)y aging. We can even say that they might be considered the norm. You can sometimes encounter chestnut barrels in whiskey production, but overall, it’s not something that is a standard.

Does this mean that more types of wood are in the offing? Perhaps, but nothing’s guaranteed. This is the first such foray for this label in its short life, and it’s already swung back to stacking its fortified wine barrels for the two finishes. If you want to try the chestnut edition, it could be a good idea to grab it while it’s here and affordable rather than looking forlornly at it forever. That’s not to say it’s guaranteed to go up in cost, or even likely, only that it might become harder to find with time.

The secret is in the number, not the nature of the barrels. It seems any three casks will qualify as Triple Triple, and this time, Jameson has chosen chestnut, with no guarantee it will be around in future releases. Just a year ago, the bottle you grabbed might have run through used bourbon, sherry, and Málaga casks. In fact, a Marsala cask edition of Triple Triple just dropped as well. If you’re not familiar with Málaga, this is a fortified wine with a unique expression that tends to lean into the sweeter side. The wines were named after Málaga, Andalusia, where the wines are produced, and they typically go well with some traditional foods from Andalusia.

You may wonder why people don’t use more wood types in barrel aging, and the simple truth is a lot of them are just too porous or otherwise unreliable to contain the spirit. American white oak is fantastic at it, and the barrels can be easily reused, but you can never reuse a whiskey barrel to make bourbon. The reason for this is that bourbon can only be made with new charred barrels. Otherwise, it can’t be classified as bourbon. If other whiskey styles don’t follow the same rules, old bourbon barrels can later be reused in their production. These barrels add flavor to the spirit, and while oak is most dominant, we see that chestnut wood can be a great alternative to tweak the flavor. 

While triple barreling a triple-distilled blend is a first for the biggest name in Irish whiskey, it’s not the first Irish whiskey to go this big. You might think that honor belongs to the new names such as Sláinte, which debuted in 2022 but don’t forget that Jameson Triple Triple has been lurking around airport duty-free shops since 2019.

The first to apply triple casking appears to be Slane (no relation to Sláinte). Slane Distillery opened in 2017 at the eponymous castle just north of Dublin. Surprisingly, this is the first Irish whiskey in the Brown-Forman portfolio, which still mostly includes Scotch and American bourbon producers.

Though these technicalities may seem a bit confusing, you don’t need to memorize all this info to be able to enjoy a glass of Jameson on St. Patrick’s Day. The only instruction you should follow is to raise the glass with the classic “sláinte,” meaning “cheers,” toast. If you prefer, you can even swap the traditional cheers with Triple Triple. Though this might cause a few odd looks, it’s only important that the bartender knows you’re drinking the new Jameson label.