was originally invented in 1973 not by an innovative bartender or crafty home distiller in the green hills of the Irish countryside, but instead by the research and development branch of a wine and spirits distribution company in a London office. The goal: to create a product that appealed internationally using surplus alcohol and cream. The result: Baileys. According to one of the inventors, the whole process took about 45 minutes and a blender.
well that certainly explains why Baileys is so poor quality despite being the first of its kind: it is just industrial runoff
i have an interest in certain drinks made with irish cream, and just generally with adding it to coffee and tea, so getting to try other brands of irish cream was a revelation that ruined Bailey's for me
my recommendations are:
- Kirkland Signature Irish Cream Liqueur (whiskey-based, though i am sure the wine-based variety is just as good i personally have not tried it)
- Carolans Irish Cream (actually owned by someone from Ireland, although the parent company is now based in another famous whiskey environ: Kentucky)
they're both generally around 40-50% lower in cost than Baileys as well
i thought for sure i had mentioned this in the original post but it looks like not
i recently discovered another cream liqueur called Amarula, created originally in South Africa in the 80s using a fruit of the marula tree, which is native to southern Africa
it is also called the elephant tree because elephants are apparently big fans of the fruit too
i am having trouble identifying where the word marula comes from, but i believe it comes into English from Swahili, but as to its etymological origins - they remain a mystery - if you have any leads let me know!
like the word marula, the tree's distribution matches very closely to the range of the Bantu speaking people of Africa, which implies to me that throughout history people liked this tree and decided to intentionally spread it with them, they would also selectively breed it to produce larger and more substantial fruits
so thanks to the people who grew this tree both in the present and the distant past for us being able to taste a bit of it even on another continent
i think any cream or irish cream based drink would be fun to riff with this ingredient in its stead, but it has a pungent, concentrated strawberry-like flavor, so it might make for some strange coffee!
also the company that makes it is now owned by Heineken, which is kinda fucked up if you think about it
