Shamrocks and Ireland are synonymous. This comes from St. Patrick and the use of the shamrock to represent the Holy Trinity. The name shamrock is derived from the Irish seamróg and simply means “little clover”. However, did you know that it is NOT the symbol of Ireland?
That honor goes to the harp. The coat of arms of Ireland is a gold harp with silver strings on a blue background. References to the harp can be found as representations of the king of Ireland as far back as the 13th century. The harp was adopted as the emblem of the Irish Free State when it separated from the UK in 1922.
The Harp is on the coins of Ireland and lo and behold, also on the Guinness Bottles and Glasses. However, Guinness was not allowed to use the same harp as the Irish Government, so you will find them reversed on bottles, cans, and glasses produced by Guinness.
The shamrock in the picture is on a pint of Guinness we ordered at the Guinness Storehouse/Sales Rooms. The area that we visited is called the St. James’s Gate Brewery and was founded in 1759. You are given a wonderful sort of PR/Fairytale tour. Explaining how Arthur Guinness took out a 9000-year lease for 45 pounds sterling a year. Well, they were smart enough to eventually buy the land outright and during the 19th and 20th centuries owned most of the buildings in the surrounding areas as well, including many streets of housing for brewery employees and offices associated with the brewery. They even have their own power plant.
The Guinness family now owns a mere 5%, the remaining belonging to Diageo. Diageo is a British company that owns such brands as Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Bailey’s and then owns 34% of Moet Hennessy which owns Moet/Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Hennessy.
The Guinness Storehouse is really fabulous. It is seven glorious stories of marketing. You can take that as you may, but the architecture is stunning. Essentially a void was carved from the center of the old storehouse. The void is designed in the shape of a pint glass. The glass, if filled would hold 14.3 million pints.
Those are raindrops on my lens, and it was blowing so fierce it was pretty darn hard to stand up straight, but what an amazing place.
