MICHAEL: Hello, and welcome to Ireland with Michael.

I'm Michael Londra, and, in this show, I get to tell you everything I love about my home country the best way I know how, through music.

Today, we're in the sunny southeast where I come from and where the rest of Ireland comes to vacation.

Well, on a day like today, it's clear to see why.

Lovely, warm weather.

Well, warmish.

The Irish Sea at your doorstep and, though I may be biased, some of the finest musicianship to be found in the country, all beckon Dubliners and those from further shores to come and bask in the sun.

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael is made possible by: ♪ MICHAEL: The music, the folklore, and the hospitality.

It's all in Ireland.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you are thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ MICHAEL: The coastal town of Dungarvan, Irish for Garbhann's Fort, after the saint who founded the church here way back in the seventh century, is probably of Viking origin.

I mean, they couldn't have chosen a better spot.

The town is situated right in the middle of the Copper Coast, Ireland's first designated geopark.

The protected lands run for 15 miles of stunning cliffs and deep, stream- cut valleys that empty onto pristine beaches, overlooked by coves and rocky outcroppings, and Dungarvan is the place from which to see it all.

Not to mention, the town itself is as charming as they come.

Most important of all, to some of us, they've got a restaurant and pub scene to rival the biggest of cities.

A food festival brings 75,000 to the town annually, and, lucky me, I'm about to meet one of the individuals at its very core.

PAUL: I'm promoting it as much as I possibly can.

MICHAEL: Chef Paul Flynn has been on the cutting edge of Ireland's foodie revolution since returning to his hometown in a big way in 1997.

Using Irish ingredients, he serves delicious, earthy food with an unbelievable depth of flavor in his restaurant, the Tannery.

Not only that, but he's passionate about spreading the techniques of great cooking to pros and home chefs alike in this chic, gorgeous cookery school just down the street from his restaurant.

And today, Chef Paul is taking on the challenge of teaching me how to make a dish.

Good luck with that, Paul.

So, Paul, I have notions.

I have notions that I am a cook at home, and then I find myself standing beside a rockstar chef like you and realize that I know nothing.

So, what are you going to show me how to cook today?

PAUL: So, what we're gonna do is make a raspberry croissant pudding, zero calories.

MICHAEL: Oh, well, that'll help.

PAUL: That's a total lie.

There's loads of calories in this, but you have it once in a while.

It is lovely.

It's a bit of indulgence.

MICHAEL: Continue to lie to me.

PAUL: So, what we have is some eggs.

(egg cracking) So, we wanna make a custard, essentially, but this is not difficult.

MICHAEL: So, if somebody from the US wants to come here and learn about Irish food, do they just kind of email you out of the blue and- PAUL: Yeah, email us out of the blue; we've rooms, and you can just book in.

We have courses that we do on a regular basis, but if people wanted to come on a specialty one-on-one or, you know, a small group, I'd love to do that as well.

You know, we don't do fancy food.

It's all about really amazing flavor, really amazing produce.

I mean, you can see the sea out here.

So, I mean, in the summertime, fish is what we concentrate on, and meat and veg in the wintertime, I suppose.

But, you know, it's to reflect the season in a really real Irish town.

So just going back to this.

MICHAEL: Let's get back to this, yeah.

PAUL: So I have some golden-brown sugar in with the egg yolks.

So, basically, what we're doing, we want to melt the sugar by just warming through a little bit of cream.

So, this is kind of like a bread-and-butter pudding, except it's made with croissants.

So, we're going to suspend the croissant in the custard.

So, in we go, mix everything together.

You absolutely could do this, anybody could.

So, all I've done is melt the sugar there.

And then we put the raspberries in, just a few.

And the raspberries are really just a perfume- MICHAEL: Oh, okay.

PAUL: For the custard.

And what I have, I have a boiled kettle.

We want to cook this.

We're going to- in some hot water.

MICHAEL: Yes.

PAUL: We're going to go about a third of the way up and that stops the custard from scrambling.

Okay.

So, I have some I did earlier.

MICHAEL: Lovely.

PAUL: They take about 40 minutes to do.

That is it.

Do you wanna have a little taste?

MICHAEL: (laughs) Of course I do!

PAUL: That was quick, wasn't it?

MICHAEL: Here we go.

PAUL: The raspberries are lovely.

MICHAEL: It's not that sweet.

It's nice.

PAUL: Good.

MICHAEL: Oh, that is good!

(Paul chuckles) Thank you, Chef.

PAUL: Pleasure, Michael.

♪ Whoo ♪ MICHAEL: As we move inland from Dungarvan into the picturesque county of Kilkenny, we come to Ballykeefe, producing a range of super premium spirits in an eco- friendly, on-farm, single-estate distillery.

I don't know that I've met a farmer who is also a distiller before in my life.

You are certainly unique, and you have a very unique story here in the heart of Kilkenny.

How did you get started?

MORGAN: We always grew malting barley on the farm, and we fed beef animals.

So it was a beef and tillage farming enterprise, is what myself and Anne have here.

And the distilling fitted perfectly into that because the malting barley, we grow it on the farm ourselves, bring it in here, and I actually physically distill it myself in here.

And then I feed the byproducts to the beef animals outside.

So it's a zero- waste program we have going here, as well, on the farm.

MICHAEL: So, in learning to be a distiller, surely that is a long journey?

MORGAN: I've studied, you know, hugely about the way whiskey was made back hundreds of years ago when Ireland was the number one supplier of whiskey in the world.

So what I wanted to do then, when it came my opportunity to build a distillery here, was produce whiskey the way it was produced back then.

MICHAEL: So the whiskey that you make is unique, how?

MORGAN: It's unique in ways that I control the growing of the crop myself, inputs that go into it, the time it is sown, the time it is harvested.

And then, in the distillation on my three copper- pot stills here, normally they would be run about 20% quicker than I run them.

I run them very, very slowly, which gives me a very, very smooth spirit at the other end.

MICHAEL: So, anytime I come into a distillery, not that I come into them a lot, you understand, Morgan, I just am drawn to these copper pots.

But I just realized in looking at them, as beautiful as they are, I have no idea why you use copper.

MORGAN: So when the alcohol vapor touches off the copper itself, it reduces the sulfates in the liquid, which gives a much smoother and less of a hangover, Michael.

MICHAEL: Oh, well, I might actually have some, then.

MORGAN: Please do.

MICHAEL: Speaking of having some, will we go and taste a drop?

MORGAN: Let's go.

MICHAEL: Come on.

(whiskey trickles) MORGAN: Cheers.

(glasses clinking) MICHAEL: Cheers to you.

Sláinte.

♪ That is incredible whiskey.

(glasses clinking) ♪ SANTINA: In this part of the world, with this beautiful whiskey, there's no shortage of fabulous producers.

MICHAEL: Ireland with Michael's resident food expert Santina Kennedy has come down from the neighboring county of Wicklow and, continuing the theme of local, has brought some food pairings to go with the whiskey.

SANTINA: I've brought a couple of selections for you.

MICHAEL: Great.

SANTINA: Goatsbridge Trout is a beautiful local trout farm.

They actually have a visitor center, so you can go and visit, but they have a fabulous selection of trout produce that they work on themselves.

So I've brought along a trout paté today to go with the whiskey.

MICHAEL: There's another little selection of food over here that, as you know, I am a cheese addict.

SANTINA: I do know that.

MICHAEL: So I want to meet this lady and talk about this fantastic-looking cheese.

SANTINA: It's time to meet Breda.

MICHAEL: How are you, Breda?

BREDA: Very good, Michael, and how are you?

MICHAEL: I'm grand.

I'm grand.

Tell us about your cheese.

BREDA: Everything is handmade.

There's quite a variety.

We started off with the Cooleeney, which is a soft, Camembert-style cheese, and now we've started on semi-hard cheeses, and they're basically made for longer shelf life for our export market.

MICHAEL: I recognize this packaging because it's for sale in the US, right?

BREDA: That's correct, yeah.

It's making its way gradually and very well- liked in the US.

MICHAEL: Well, if it's very well-liked, I want to taste a dab of this.

I'm going to have it with my- BREDA: Whiskey.

MICHAEL: Whiskey.

Cheers.

BREDA: Cheers!

(chuckles) ♪ (Michael chuckles) MICHAEL: Whiskey's gorgeous, and the cheese is gorgeous.

BREDA: Right.

Thank you, yeah.

MICHAEL: It's not just cheesemaking we've passed down through the years, either.

See if you can make sense of this.

(Michael speaking in Gaelic) (Michael speaking in Gaelic) bigtime.

That's Ireland's first and official language, Irish or Gaelic, spoke as our primary tongue all the way until the late 19th century, when the English thought they had a better word for, well, everything.

Luckily, there's a revival of interest in speaking and passing on this shared heritage that's keeping the Irish language alive and flourishing into the 21st century.

(singing in Gaelic) ♪ MICHAEL: Irish band Seo Linn met in the Gaeltacht, an Irish-speaking area, at a summer camp for teens to practice and learn Gaelic.

Ye are the young kids who took what I think is probably something traditionally thought of as not that cool and turned it into something very cool, and that's the Irish language, and that's why I wanted to talk to you today.

STIOFÁN: The Irish language is something that's incredibly important to us and the Irish culture and music and everything like that, and it always has been, and our starting-off point in Connemara with the songs and being down the pub and playing trad music and stuff like that, that was- that was the genesis of this whole thing that we're doing.

(singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) STIOFÁN: There's a whole buzz, really, around language and Irish culture and even the music and stuff, with different bands and stuff they're bringing back, like...

They're bringing kind of what you would have associated with kind of the older age kind of stuff, bringing it to the fore, in a new kind of contemporary way, which I think is brilliant, and I hope more elements of the Irish culture go through that same process.

Like, I'd love to see people coming here with mullets and dressing up and going step dancing of a night out, do you know what I mean?

Instead of listening to- MICHAEL: I'm starting to see, like, at the festivals, at the fleadhs, kids going to Irish nights and step dancing.

Back in my day, it was disco.

STIOFÁN: Yeah.

(singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ Oh, when you build those blocks ♪ ♪ It's rare they don't fall to the ground ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ STIOFÁN: And they're all different parts of our culture and tradition that have been there for years, and it's fun when you connect with it and it's enjoyable and it's interesting, and the more we do of that, in every aspect, to our cultures, and other cultures too, I think the more kind of rounded and grounded experiences you'll have in your life, you know?

I don't know, the simple things like that that I think have influenced who we are and it's an insight into who we are, I think too, you know?

♪ Go and take my cross ♪ ♪ But don't ever be scared of the ones you go down ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ (singing in Gaelic) ♪ (waves lapping) MICHAEL: Preserving Ireland isn't just about preserving a language, traditions, or even our art, it's also taking care of the land as its temporary stewards.

Sustaining this legacy is something well understood by Mr. Kelly, proprietor of the hotel where I had my first singing gig, Kelly's Resort.

Tell us about this garden.

BILL: It's much more sustainable having our own garden, and it makes so much sense.

And also, from the customer point of view, to be eating produce that we make, that we grow ourselves in the garden, just makes perfect sense to us, yeah.

MICHAEL: You know, it's all very well using cool terms like sustainability, but it's actually difficult to do that, and I can't imagine what it must be like to plan.

BILL: In the summertime, we're up to 50%, 60% of all our produce comes from the garden, so we do all our own salads, tomatoes.

MICHAEL: So, I heard- I heard a number there of the amount of tomatoes that you use.

And that was over a ton last year.

BILL: Yeah.

We'll be aiming for two tons this year.

(both laughing) MICHAEL: And those tomatoes will have just a few steps to go from the garden before arriving at one of the tables in Kelly's immaculate and stunningly decorated dining room, also largely dedicated to the preservation of Irish culture.

Karla, I had dinner in this gorgeous restaurant last night, and I really didn't pay attention to my really gorgeous food because I was looking at this incredible art collection all around us.

And you are the person I know who can tell me how this all started.

KARLA: Yeah, well, this all started actually in the '50s, and now it's over 400 pieces of Irish and international artists, and it's really, really fabulous.

You have some gems here.

You have pieces by Andy Warhol, pieces by Miró, by Calder, and then you have really good Irish art.

MICHAEL: If have a little walk around the hotel, you can show me some of your favorite gems and some of the really important pieces.

KARLA: Of course.

♪ MICHAEL: So, this piece really grabbed my attention.

Tell us about it.

KARLA: Yeah.

This piece over here is by Mark Francis.

He's an Irish artist, but he's based in London, and he's very much interested in science.

So very often his pieces, his paintings have to do with things that you can look at with a microscope.

And he likes to build his paintings with many different layers.

He uses many colors, as you can see.

Is a really, really good Irish artist, and it's fabulous to have this piece here.

♪ MICHAEL: And here she is.

Miss Deborah Harry.

KARLA: Isn't it fantastic that we have an Andy Warhol right here?

Again, we could literally touch it, but- MICHAEL: We can't.

KARLA: We won't.

(laughs) But it is so wonderful that a piece from one of the most important American artists, the super famous Andy Warhol, the originator of pop art, we have a piece right here.

And I love that, in this piece, in particular, it's fantastic to talk about contrast in art, how the red in the lips is really contrasting against the white and the black.

And it's just a fabulous piece.

And it's right here, in Kelly's.

MICHAEL: A pop icon painted by a pop icon.

KARLA: Correct.

(birds cawing) MICHAEL: While Warhol worked away in his factory all day, when you're in the southeast of Ireland, you'll want to take advantage of our weather and the scenery and do your painting outside en plein air, something local artists Jane and Tony are passionate about.

Jane, Tony, I'm here in one of my favorite places in Ireland, talking to some of my favorite people.

I've known ye for a fair few years now.

JANE: (laughs) Just a few.

MICHAEL: I woke up this morning in Kelly's, looking out across this water, and the first thing I thought about was the light here in Rosslare.

As painters, that must be the reason you're here, am I right?

JANE: It is.

My biggest influence is the light here, the skies, the big skies.

Fabulous.

MICHAEL: Tony, tell me about plein air art.

What specifically is it, and why do you love it?

TONY: Well, it's a challenge, of course, especially in Ireland because the weather changes so much.

It was sunny here, believe it or not, this morning.

And, you know, now it's gray.

So you've got... You know, the weather and the sky is a big part of landscape painting.

MICHAEL: So, tell us about your painting.

So, with plein air, do you use all oils all the time?

Is it a watercolor?

What- why- what- what is- what matches plein air?

JANE: Any- any med- well, most- any medium, really.

We both use oil.

I use pastel, as well, although that's not good in rain.

Like, watercolor won't, but the oils are... You'll get away with a shower, you know?

MICHAEL: Right.

JANE: So, no, it's sketching, drawing.

It's anything.

MICHAEL: Although, growing up, it always felt like Kelly's was a world away, in reality, it's just a few miles down the coast from my hometown of Wexford, where we're headed now to a place that was very special to me growing up.

This is the Wexford Arts Centre, and it's at the heart of the community here, providing a place for young people especially to express themselves and find their voice.

As it happens, it also once played host to one of America's greatest voices, none other than Frederick Douglass.

A fierce advocate for the liberation of all people, Douglass fled to Ireland following the publication of his autobiography for fear he would be arrested as an escaped slave.

Ireland's abolitionist Quakers gave him refuge here, where he found sympathy with Catholics fighting their own struggle for freedom from oppression.

The trip was transformative for Douglass, who wrote that here he felt like a man for the first time instead of chattel.

It was equally as transformative for those who heard him speak, and today, his trip is being recognized and commemorated by civil rights advocates honoring his legacy.

♪ Deirdre, we're sitting in this very special room.

I first came here in 1976 for my first rehearsal as a young musician.

However, for you, this place has extra special meaning.

DEIRDRE: Yeah, it does.

My husband and I discovered...

It's a bit of a long story, but we discovered that Frederick Douglass had spoken here in this very room, and I think this ceiling is actually the same ceiling.

Walls have ears.

I like to think that the words that were spoken in this room are still in the walls.

♪ MICHAEL: Abigail, I'm here in one of my favorite cities in Ireland, in one of my favorite hotels in Ireland, and I find myself at a stop on the Frederick Douglass Trail.

I know you know a lot more than I do about this, so would you tell me the story of Frederick Douglass and the Imperial Hotel?

ABIGAIL: We had a vigorous anti-slavery society here in Cork, so it was a natural place for him to come.

MICHAEL: I know that, prior to coming to the Imperial, he was kind of forced to talk about things like temperance.

But here, in Cork, he got to talk about his story.

ABIGAIL: A lot of his ins were through temperance, were through the Quakers, through Presbyterians, through Catholics, as well, who were very much part of the temperance movement.

So he had to fit in with that, where they were coming from with their motives.

And in the Imperial, he was given full rein to talk about his heart, so his main heart, which is the abolition.

And so the slave society gave him this platform.

He gave a speech, which is very well published, actually, it's easy to find now online, called American Prejudice Against Color.

♪ MICHAEL: Michael, we're here at the Unitarian Church right in the heart of Cork, and I had no idea that this beautiful mural is here.

Why on Earth would you have a mural dedicated to this man right here in the center of Cork?

MICHAEL S.: Well, when this man, okay, came to Cork, he was invited by members of our church.

And this man to your left, Richard Dowden, was the Lord Mayor of Cork, and he was a member of our church.

MICHAEL: And what is the intent of the mural?

MICHAEL S.: It is, I think, to show inclusiveness, to show that we are one human family, really.

That's it.

And it's a message I think the world desperately needs to hear, desperately needs to hear.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL: In this episode, we've taken a tour of some of my favorite things, visited some of my favorite places, and met some of my favorite people.

♪ So here's one more, the fiddler in my band, the wildly talented Katie Grennan, performing a few tunes with her group, the Bow Tides.

♪ ♪ ♪ Thanks for joining me on my travels around the sunny southeast.

I'm Michael Londra, and I hope to see you next time on Ireland with Michael.

But for now, cheers.

Sláinte.

ANNOUNCER: Want to continue your travels to Ireland?

Your choice of the Ireland with Michael DVD Seasons one and two or Seasons three and four with bonus concert footage is available for $30.

Ireland with Michael: A Musical Journey CD with songs from Michael and his guest artists, is available for $20.

The Ireland with Michael Companion travel book, featuring places to visit as seen in all seasons, is also available for $30.

This offer is made by Wexford House.

Shipping and handling is not included.

MICHAEL: To learn more about everything you've seen in this episode, go to IrelandWithMichael.com.

ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael was made possible by: ♪ MICHAEL: The music, the folklore, and the hospitality.

It's all in Ireland.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you're thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

MICHAEL: Okay, put your hands up in the air!

Come on, let's get a-wavin'!

♪ In my heart, its rightful queen ♪ ♪ Ever loving, ever tender ♪ That's it!

♪ Ever true ♪ ♪ Like the sun, your smile has shone ♪ Go on, Wexford!

♪ Gladdening all it glowed upon ♪ ♪