NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Irish eyes will once again be smiling and Fifth Avenue will be bathed in green as New York City's famed St. Patrick's Day Parade steps off Thursday morning after a two-year pandemic hiatus.
As they have done every year since 1851, the New York National Guard's Fighting 69th will lead the parade down Fifth Avenue. While the pandemic canceled the event in 2020 and 2021, the Fighting 69th in both years kept the St. Patrick's Day tradition alive by marching along Fifth Avenue in an abbreviated parade.
The unit has a number of St. Patrick's Day traditions, including marching in the parade with a pair of Irish Wolfhounds — the official mascot of the 69th Infantry — and starting the day off with a toast of Irish whiskey.
Members raise their glasses to the regiment with not just any whiskey, though. The toast is made with their very own whiskey blend.
The Fighting 69th Irish Whiskey was first introduced in 2019, with a portion of the sales benefiting the 69th Infantry Regiment Historical Trust.
Master blender Chris Leskowicz said the blend is a true Irish whiskey.
"The grain is Irish, the water's Irish, it's distilled, bottled, blended, barreled everything is done in Ireland by law," Leskowicz told WCBS 880's Paul Murnane.
Leskowicz called the whiskey a "point of pride."
"We wanted to do something special for them because there's always been Irish whiskey and what I wanted to do was a blend," he said. "Most Irish whiskey, people say it's got too much bite to it, and I say well the expensive whiskey doesn't. The thing was to do a blend that tasted like the expensive, that was very easy going down, yet to keep it affordable for the troops. I wanted something that the average troop could drink every day versus having to sip it because it was too expensive."
Creating the whiskey was a "work of love" and Leskowicz said it was important to honor the 69th Infantry Regiment, which dates to 1849 and whose members have served in the Civil War, World War I, World War II and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"These are all mainly New York City police, fire and first responders," he said. "This is an act of love. It was a pleasure to do it. Although I love what I do, at the same time there was no way I was going to have something that was going to be just typical, I wanted something that was special. It honored those guys that protect us."
The whiskey is triple-distilled in handmade copper pot stills and cask aged in once-used bourbon and sherry barrels.
"I used a little bit of port barrels to round out and fill out the flavor inside and then to take that bite I used a wee bit of sherry cask," Leskowicz explained. "That sherry takes the bite off the backside so it's very balanced. It goes in easy and unfortunately it runs down your throat very quickly. There's no bite to it at all, it's a pleasure."
This year's parade promises to be the biggest ever and will be particularly significant to members of the Fighting 69th, who were involved in the National Guard's response to the pandemic and are now preparing to deploy to the Horn of Africa for a security mission.
“It represents a return to normalcy following the COVID-19 pandemic," Lt. Col. Shawn Tabankin, the commander of the 69th, said. “Many of the soldiers marching have been on the front lines of the COVID response mission, and this parade will mark the point where we transition from our state mission back to our federal one as we prepare to deploy.”
The parade will also include a special mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral and salute to those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
New York Army National Guard Soldiers will play "Taps" along with members of the NYPD and FDNY to honor the 2,763 people who died at the World Trade Center.
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