Booze Facts Originating From Ireland:

• Though Ireland is better known for stout, 63% of the beer sold in the country is lager. Stout makes up 32% of the market, with ale the remaining 5%.
• The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000 year lease on its property, at a perpetual rate of 45 Irish pounds per year.
• On any given day 5.5 million pints of Guinness are consumed around the world.
• On St. Patrick’s Day, that number more than doubles to 13 million pints.
• Guinness Beer Brewery founded est.1759.
• James Joyce once called Guinness stout “the wine of Ireland.”
• One traditional Irish cure for a hangover was to be buried up to the neck in moist river sand.
• Even Saint Patrick liked a tipple. It was once popular in Ireland to pin sprigs of shamrocks on your coat on Saint Patrick’s Day in remembrance of his using shamrock leaves to illustrate the idea of the holy trinity. At the end of the day, one would “drown the shamrock” by putting a few shamrocks into a glass and covering them with whiskey.
• Baileys Irish Cream, which was launched in Ireland in the early seventies, is now the most popular liqueur in the world.
• Jameson Irish Whiskey was established in 1780 when John Jameson established the Bow Street Distillery in Dublin.
• By the early 1800s, the distillery was producing one million gallons (3,785,412 litres) of whiskey per year and had grown to be the largest in the world.
• With annual sales of over 31 million bottles, Jameson is by far the best selling Irish whiskey in the world.

A joke at the expense of the Irish:

An Englishman, a Scott, and an Irishman walked into a pub.
Each ordered a pint of beer and a fly landed in each one’s beer.
The Englishman, turning up his nose, pushed his beer away and asked for another one.
The Scott picked the fly out, shrugged, and went about drinking his beer.
The Irishman pinched the fly between his fingers and yelled “SPIT IT OUT! SPIT IT OUT!”

Erin Go Bragh!

St. Patrick’s Day In Vancouver: The Obvious

In case you weren’t aware, this years Vancouver St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been cancelled for 2010. The organizers say the Vancouver 2010 Paralympics was the reason for the cancellation. Whatever, don’t hold it against the games.  There will still be drunken revelry taking place all over the city. Shamrocks and shenanigans will proceed.

On March 17th all of the (obvious) pubs listed below will feature some form of entertainment that includes most of the prerequisite stereotypical St. Patrick’s Day festivities such as live music, Irish dancers, Celtic folk singers, traditional Irish menu items and several versions of ‘the drink’. You’ll be dancing an Irish jig and puking green beer before you know it.

In no particular order:

• The Blarney Stone - http://blarneystone.ca/
• Doolin’s Irish Pub - http://www.doolins.ca/
• Lamplighter Public House - http://www.thelamplighter.ca/
• The Irish Heather - http://irishheather.com/
• Ceili’s Irish Pub & Restaurant - http://www.ceilis.com/
• The Morrissey - http://www.morrisseypub.com/
• The Wolf and Hound - http://wolfandhound.ca/
• Dentry’s Irish Grill - http://www.dentrys.com/
• Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug - http://www.johnniefox.ca
• The Lennox - Granville & Robson (gasp, no website?)

One word of caution, the aforementioned locales will be insanely busy (because they’re the obvious ones everyone thinks of … even us) so we suggest you plan ahead if attendance is important to you. Better yet, on St. Patrick’s Day everyone is a little bit Irish and the same goes for pubs and bars. You can’t swing a shillelagh without hitting a bar dressed in Irish drag so you’re bound to find green beer and short tartan skirts on some great lasses at any pub.

Erin Go Bragh!