When the American drinks giant Sazerac bought Lough Gill Distillery three years ago, it was probably inevitable that they would change the name. A quick scroll through their brands will show you that they like plain, simple names – easy to pronounce, easy to say. Lough is not the easiest word for anyone who has no familiarity with the Irish language – even the scots have one up on us there, as their version of the same word – Loch – happens to be known to people worldwide due to the fact there is a lake in Scotland with a mythical beast living in it (it’s Loch Ness, btw). But with lough, will the average American know how to say that? Loaf? Lounge? Log? And Gill, like on a fish or is that a soft G, like Gillian? You want a brand that has no obstacles to a sale – no consumer should have to pause and try to get their mouth around a word that they are unsure of. Yes that means a world filled with homogenised brands, but sometimes that is what it takes – most consumers like simplicity.
Where Sazerac have bought legacy brands, the names went unchanged because they were buying a heritage associated with the brand, although even then they are not afraid to execute a bold rebrand. When they bought Paddy from Irish Distillers Ltd for an undisclosed fee in 2016, they changed the branding to Paddy’s and gave it a makeover that was far more Irish-American than before – with his bowler hat, the cartoonish caricature of Paddy O’Flaherty was now more ‘top of de marnin to ya’ then the proud Corkman he was. But given they paid an alleged €90 million for the brand, they could do with it what they wanted.
But Lough Gill Distillery was not a heritage brand. In fact, they had no product on shelves in any capacity, with their adjacent Athrú brand being entirely sourced. There was heritage to build on – the distillery, although built into the front of a giant factory, sat behind the historic Hazelwood House on the edge of a lake in County Sligo. And much like anywhere in Ireland, there are a million stories to be mined from the history of the place – legends, myths, historical anecdotes, poetry, prose, and simple geography. And somehow with this incredible, rich tapestry from which they could pull any thread to weave their own brand, they went with Hawk’s Rock Distillery.
In their defence I will say this – better to change the name now than when there is any real brand allegiance to Lough Gill Distillery. Locals might have a great sense of pride in the local lake having a distillery named after it, but outside Ireland, nobody cares. Also the fact there is a distillery named Lough Ree might have influenced them, but they are very small and I get the sense that Sazerac might not even know they exist. Changing the name before there is any real brand loyalty is a good move – I can still recall the conniptions that came when the new look Paddy’s oirish whiskey was revealed, but if we want brands to live on, they have to grow and change. Sazerac knew what they wanted to do with that brand, and they did it (although as far as I know, it’s still Paddy in some markets, including Ireland).
With Hawk’s Rock they also move on from the initial founder’s vision – David Raethorne’s Lough Gill Distillery is no more, from here on in it’s Sazerac’s Hawk’s Rock Distillery. Per Business Plus, at the end of 2021, Lough Gill Distillery had bulk whiskey stocks valued at €6.3m, capital investment in the land, premises and equipment totalled €10.6m. The risk capital invested was €16.8m. You’d have to assume that Sazerac covered all that and a good chunk more when they bought it, and with that comes the right to call it whatever they want.
The name change reflects Sazerac Company’s vision for the future of Irish Whiskey – the art and science of blending, innovation and respect for Sligo’s rich heritage. Named after a prominent outcrop in the Ox Mountains that inspired Nobel Prize winning poet William Butler (W.B.) Yeats’ play “At the Hawk’s Well”, Hawk’s Rock Distillery aims to become a global hub for Irish Whiskey, while offering a gateway to explore the rich traditions of Sligo and the surrounding region.
“The renaming of Hawk’s Rock Distillery marks a new, yet familiar, frontier for us,” says Sazerac President and CEO Jake Wenz. “Sazerac is known for its balanced approach to honoring tradition while embracing change in constant pursuit of crafting the world’s best spirits at our distilleries in America, India, Canada and France. Our mission holds true for Ireland, and we are excited to reveal how we are blending time-honored traditions with bold innovation to advance the art of Irish whiskey-making.”
Piggybacking on WB Yeats makes sense – the region is known for its links to Ireland’s pre-eminent emo. But At The Hawk’s Well is a pretty deep cut to claim a reference to – premiering in 1916 it saw Yeats explore his usual themes of Irishness, identity, age, and mythology but in the style of Japanese Noh theatre. The play is only around 40 minutes long, and has mentions of hawks, and of rocks, but precisely zero mention of Hawk’s Rock, a stony outcrop in the hills near Lough Gill. Does any of this matter? Not really. They could have plucked any number of easy-to-prounce anglicisations of local placenames, but they happened to choose one which is distinctly American.
Hawk’s Rock does not evoke the waters and the wild of the west of Ireland; as many have pointed out, it sounds like an American bourbon. Hawk’s Rock is perhaps closer to Eagle Rare, which, incidentally, is also owned by Sazerac, than any Irish whiskey brand. I can understand that they might not want a brand name that is hard to pronounce, but Hawk’s Rock doesn’t sound Irish, although perhaps most grating will be seeing that apostrophe come and go depending on who the copywriter is.
But to look beyond our discomfort with change of any kind in the Irish whiskey category, this is a vote of confidence in the Sligo distillery. From what I can gather, Sazerac are running it full throttle since they took over and have big plans to redevelop Hazlewood House as a visitors centre. And the real test here will not be whether the name on the distillery is Irish enough to appease the guardians of Irish identity (myself included) but whether they make good booze or not, which we will all get to determine in June when their new whiskeys are released.
Update 06/06/2025 – their first new whiskey ‘from the distillery’ is not from there at all – it’s a sourced 20 year old single malt, presumbaly from Bushmills, and they expect you to pay €199 for it. Press release here, which makes zero mention of the fact it was sourced.
At the end of last year I wrote a piece about Irish whiskey’s fortunes – good and bad – in 2024 and where the category was headed in 2025. The piece was published in American Distiller Magazine, but was edited for length. Here are the quotes from the people I spoke to in full.
How has the last 12 months been for you – what are the challenges you have faced as a craft distiller, how have your costs been affected by the economic crisis? Are smaller distillers like yourselves better placed to survive the current crisis in whiskey sales?
“The past 12 months have been a time of both challenge and opportunity for Tipperary Boutique Distillery. As a craft distiller, we’ve had to navigate significant hurdles, particularly due to rising costs which have affected every area of our business, from raw materials like grain and glass to energy prices and transport. This has meant that our margins are being squeezed, which can be especially challenging in a sector like ours where we already face long maturation periods and high production costs. Inflation has certainly been a key factor influencing decisions, and we’ve had to adapt our strategy while ensuring that the quality of our whiskey remains uncompromised.
“As a smaller distillery, we’re certainly not immune to these pressures, but we do believe that our flexibility and focus on quality allow us to better navigate these turbulent times. We may not have the scale of larger producers, but we can be more nimble in adjusting to market shifts and responding to consumer demands. The direct relationship we maintain with our customers is a significant advantage, allowing us to create unique whiskies that speak to our customers’ specific needs. We actually have an exciting project coming later this year that should allow us to look at the needs of individual customers.”
What trends do you see coming in 2025 – both in terms of whiskey styles and consumer habits? What markets are you focussing on?
“In terms of trends for 2025, we see several exciting developments on the horizon. There is a rise in demand for sustainable practices, with more drinkers seeking out brands that emphasize eco-friendly production methods. We expect a continued shift with younger consumers leaning towards more eco-conscious choices such as ‘quality over quantity’ and more experienced consumers experimenting with different cask finishes and innovative aging techniques.
“We have just bottled some new exciting single malts which we have finished in Mezcal and Sake casks respectively. These are already causing an interested stir amongst some of our customers who are ‘in the know’!
“We’re also seeing a growing interest in Irish whiskey in Asian markets. We will continue to focus on growing our presence in these key markets while also nurturing the domestic market, which has shown tremendous support for our products.”
Is single pot still whiskey still a contender or has that moment passed? Will the reworking of the technical file affect you?
“We certainly believe that Single Pot Still remains a contender in the world of Irish whiskey. While the industry continues to evolve, and we have largely focussed on Single Malt whiskies, we continue to lay down some Single Pot Still each year as this remains one of the cornerstones of Irish whiskey heritage.
“The reworking of the technical file will certainly have implications for the industry, and we welcome any expansion of the category, particularly with regards to maintaining historical relevance. However, until the IWA publishes proposed wording, it is hard to discuss how individual companies will be affected.
“We would say that as a distillery which prides itself on producing traditional styles, we are well-positioned to embrace any changes that come our way, as long as it supports the long-term growth and sustainability of the category.
“Whilst there are undoubtedly challenges in the current economic climate, we believe that our approach of small-batch, premium production, with a focus on innovation and sustainability, positions Tipperary Boutique Distillery well for the future. We’re excited for 2025 and beyond, and we look forward to continuing to share our passion for Irish whiskey with the world.”
How has the last 12 months been for The Shed – what are the challenges you have faced as a craft distiller, and how have your costs been affected by the economic crisis?
“The last 12 months (celebrating a decade of distilling on December 21st, 2024 at The Shed Distillery) have been challenging as inflation & high interest rates took their toll on consumer sentiment globally. Thankfully with the strength of appeal & affection for Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin across key markets we grew sales strongly in the 2nd half of 2024 with our strongest October – December on record. The decision to absorb input cost increases and not pass on to our consumers served us well throughout the year. The addition of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin with Brazilian pineapple expression during 2024 was a huge success. Our Drumshanbo Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey had a record year of growth due to its authenticity & high quality being entirely distilled, matured & bottled in Drumshanbo at The Shed Distillery. The Marsala expression was particularly well received in 2024.”
What trends do you see coming in 2025 – both in terms of whiskey styles and consumer habits? What markets are you focussing on?
“The consumer in 2025 will be seeking value in their purchase of Gin & Whiskey brands. Brands with an authentic story that is honest & with a twist will do well. Overpriced brands, celeb brands or brands with a weak back story may come under pressure as consumers reset their preferences for quality, excitement & value. We believe we are well placed to take advantage of this trend.”
How concerned are you about potential tariffs on Irish spirits under the Trump presidency?
“The irony of potential tariffs is the EU and the US are each other’s largest export markets when it comes to spirits and therefore it is in neither sides’ interest to see tariff escalation. Spirits from both sides of the Atlantic have enjoyed and benefited from tariff-free trade for several decades & we hope this continues well into the future. The spirits category has many products that have distinctive regional identity, with many EU & US spirits protected by geographical indications and distinctive product status such as Irish Whiskey & Bourbon. These products are not commodities, nor can they be produced elsewhere so it would make no sense.”
Michael McKay, Achill Island Distillery
How has the last 12 months been for you – what are the challenges you have faced as a craft distiller, how have your costs been affected by the economic crisis?
Are smaller distillers like yourselves better placed to survive the current crisis in whiskey sales?
“An unprecedented increase to the cost of production (Barrels Malt and Energy) in 2024 was a challenging period to negotiate. But this was a universal problem for all distilleries.
Malt and barrel prices, while still high are showing signs of coming down in 2025 which is welcome. Having been in the Industry for over ten years we were in the fortunate position of having mature stock to lean on. If we were just starting out as a craft Distillery during this volatile period things would have been a lot more difficult to sustain.
“Outside of the cost increases, 2024 was great year for the Distillery in terms of brand development & sales. We released over 13 new products across our Achill Island Distillers & IrishAmerican range. Single Malt Whiskeys, Single Pot Still Whiskey Vodka, Gin & Poitín.
“Sales – while the fanfare around Irish Whiskey has calmed somewhat and the appetite for high priced craft releases has softened, we had our best year in sales in 2024.
We began export of our Achill Island line of products into Europe and started airport sales in Ireland. The Distillery established a new partnership with the Waldemar Behn Group in 2024 which brought our IrishAmerican range of products to travel retail on a global scale.
The tourism trade, given our location has been a massive plus and we are seeing sales recover back to pre-Covid levels this year on Achill Island.”
What trends do you see coming in 2025 – both in terms of whiskey styles and consumer habits? What markets are you focussing on?
How are your peated products received given the perception that Irish is unpeated?
“We expect to see the continued emergence of Pot Still Irish Whiskey in 2025. This style has gained increased recognition over the last few years & with more distilleries contributing, the choice is is expanding. I think consumers will be more price sensitive and it will be age statements that will encourage people to spend on premium whiskeys.
“I believe the popularity of Peated Irish Whiskey is increasing all the time. We started a Single Malt peated expression at cask strength as a small side project to see how it would go and it’s quickly become one of our best sellers. Our Cask Strength Peated Irish whiskey has ”a romantic smell and feels like Ireland in a bottle” to quote one customer.
“In 2025 we are focusing on international travel retail our USA Market and also the Asian market. We will be releasing our Founder’s Reserve IrishAmerican 21 Year old Single Malt in the next few months. This is the 2nd instalment of our Founders Reserve series. Named after our Founder and Father John McKay, all the whiskeys from this Series are from his personal collection of vintage Whiskey casks. This 21 year old Single Malt is aged in Bourbon casks for 21 years and finished in Olorosso Sherry, bottled at 47% abv.
“We have also been developing a new brand for the USA market over the last couple of years – San Patricios. This is an exciting new concept we launched in Boston Jan 2024.
San Patricios is a seven year old Single Malt Irish Whiskey finished in Tequila and Mezcal Casks and bottled at 50% abv. Inspired by the 200 Irish Volunteers who fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American war of 1846-48 known as the San Patricios. These 2 nations are joining forces once again in this remarkably smooth Irish Whiskey with a Latin influence.
A unique 7 year old Single Malt Irish Whiskey aged in Bourbon, Tequila and Mezcal Casks. Finished in the finest Anejo Tequila & Mezcal casks from the regions of Jalisco and Oaxaca Mexico. The perfect marriage of Tequila and Whiskey. San Patricios is a full bodied Single Malt Irish Whiskey, sweet cinnamon Bourbon notes. Developing herbal Agave flavours & balanced with a delicate smokey Mezcal finish.”
With your focus on America are you concerned about the possibility of tariffs under a Trump presidency?
“Yes it is a concern, but the last time there was tariffs imposed Irish Whiskey was lucky enough to dodge the bullet. Hopefully it is the same this time.”
How has the last 12 months been for Ballykeefe, has the distillery been protected from the cost of living/cost of distilling crisis by virtue of being a farm distillery, or has that made it harder?
“The past year has been a year of expansion to new markets particularly the USA. We have invested considerable time and resources building relationships in the on and off trade with our phenomenal partner MISA imports. The old adage of the necessity to get “liquid on the lips” of as many as possible is starting to show results, as more and more people get to taste the “Wow factor” of our field to glass spirits. Being an on farm distillery we have been protected from many inflation costs on inputs such as cost of barley, however we have not been spared the soaring increase in energy costs of gas and electricity. Being a small family business, we are spared many of the costs of the big corporates and to protect our value for money reputation in the market place we have not raised pricing to our customers, preferring to cut marketing budgets and rely on awards and word of mouth and social media instead. Economically it is a tough time for all families and as farmers we have a lot of practice in surviving the lean years, as our grandmother so often said “live horse and you will get grass”.”
Where do you see the next 12 months taking the Irish whiskey category as a whole and Ballykeefe in particular – what trends are you keeping an eye on, if any?
“We feel very lucky to be part of the Irish Whiskey category which has been on an impressive growth trajectory and which the experts predict will continue. We take nothing for granted for ourselves, we are on a long journey with modest resources to build our brand in a very competitive marketplace. But we knew this from the outset and have remained faithful to our original vision of creating whiskies that add value to the category, not just in ultra-premium quality, but also as a uniquely 100% field to glass family farm distillery. We see a clear trend where many consumers are not only looking for a great tasting whiskey, but are also focused on the source of the ingredients, environmental credentials and the degree of craft involved in the production. At Ballykeefe we love what we do, therefore we enter 2025 with a lot of excitement and anticipation. One of the most exciting and visible changes this year will be our first branding refresh to better communicate our story though the labels on our bottles. We also eagerly anticipate another very busy year of visitors to our distillery, building a network of new friends from across the globe is most definitely one of the highlights of being in this business.”
Comment from the Irish Whiskey Association
How has the last 12 months been for IWA members?
“We were heartened to see the recent Bord Bia report which saw the export value of Irish Whiskey recover well in 2024. That said, there are significant headwinds for all Irish Whiskey producers at home and abroad. Our membership still has to contend with inflation, increase in the cost-of-living and cost-of-business, supply chain pressures and changes in consumer preferences and behaviour. Irish Whiskey is a high-quality, premium product and our increase in export value is testament to the hard work and innovation of our Irish Whiskey companies. Looking to 2025, we need to ensure government support and continued investment in state agencies, along with facilitating a business and policy environment conducive to growth to copper-fasten the achievements our sector has made.”
What is the current status with the technical file and any planned edits – how will these change the way Irish whiskey is made?
“In terms of the Technical File, the Irish Whiskey Association is among the stakeholders currently in consultation with the Department of Agriculture regarding the proposed edits to the File. It is envisaged that these changes will be referred for public consultation this year, which will inform the Department’s consideration of the matter. The main proposal is to expand the definition of Pot Still Irish Whiskey to allow for higher levels of oats, wheat or rye to be used which will greatly enhance the Pot Still category by broadening the potential grains’ taste profile and allowing more of a unique Irish Pot Still selling point. This will also align the current definition with the true history of Pot Still Irish Whiskey.”
Cork Whiskey Festival 2025 was a roaring success – three days, two brand expos, dozens of masterclasses, 1,500 tickets and every event sold out. If there was a downturn in the Irish whiskey category, the festival showed no signs of it – it was a celebration of a diverse and vibrant industry. In fact, the only sign that all might not be well in the category was the people condemning anyone talking down the industry. Several people I spoke to said that really, everyone should stop focussing on the industry’s current struggles and instead focus on the great success of the Irish whiskey category in the last 15 years. Channelling Bertie Ahern in his pomp, the message being delivered to my ears was that those talking down the industry need to simply stop talking, and we should continue to only speak in glowing terms about Irish whiskey, and that the same unblinking, relentlessly positive press it has been given – which led many investors to charge headlong into the industry – should be allowed to continue. Of course, once people were finished dishing out a good old fashioned scolding about negativity (or any coverage of very real struggles of many distilleries), they did admit that yes, things were incredibly hard right now and yes many distilleries were cutting production, or staff, or simply shutting, but still – good news only please.
The strangest part of this was the complete lack of empathy with those who work in the industry who have been let go – it veered from an everything-is-awesome, head in the sand attitude, to a kind of laissez faire capitalism approach to how the challenges were spoken about; that it was natural that some distilleries would not make it, this was simply how things were always going to play out. ‘Look at Scotland’ they say, look at how the Scotch industry expands and contracts over the decades. But given we had our first expansion of the industry for a century in the last 12 years, our first contraction is going to hurt quite a lot. Plenty people were simply not expecting this. But to many others who will not survive, there was not a lot of sympathy. The message was clear – some must make this sacrifice so the industry can thrive; blood for the blood god, job cuts for the greater good.
We had a decade of fluff, talking up distilleries that didn’t exist (yet) winning awards for products they didn’t make; tales of multi-million euro deals where brands and barely operational distilleries were sold, an endless sea of glowing praise and headlines about how great everything is. If you want that to continue, this era is not for you. Nobody is talking down the industry – the facts are the facts, and the media is simply reporting them. Taking it personally when a publication highlights that multiple distilleries are either now silent or facing complete closure, as though reporting the hard truths of whiskey is an act of treason, is rather silly. Either you think the category is big enough and strong enough to survive its current woes (spoiler alert, it is), or you think we all need to keep backslapping and everything will be fine because the category is a timid little child that needs to be shielded from the truth.
The industry continues to do its thing. Last week, Irish Distillers Limited released the last of their Silent Distillery releases, a bottling of 50 year old stock from the old Midleton distillery, which shut in 1975 and has been the tourism wing of the operation for decades. If anyone at the launch was aware of the irony of the fact that all of Midleton’s distilling operations are silent at the moment, then they didn’t say, but looking at social posts of the guests in their black tie it had the air of a well-heeled wake. One week later, parent company Pernod Ricard announced a 3% decline in third-quarter sales, missing forecasts. The Business Post contacted IDL to ask about the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs, and did not get a response.
The following day, the Irish Examiner reported that Killarney Brewing and Distilling Company had entered examinership in an effort to save the business. The company said it faced severe challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic, including rising raw material costs, supply chain disruptions, delays in opening their distillery, excess whiskey inventory, and geopolitical uncertainty, all of which hurt revenue and profitability. Earlier this year, the company had a preliminary merger agreement with a U.S. partner, but that deal has since fallen through. I spoke to a couple of reps from Killarney at the recent Cork Whiskey Festival, asked them how everything was going, and they were full of positivity. Because everything is always great, until it isn’t.
But it is not all bad news – of the four largest distilleries who have announced production slowdowns, there have apparently been no job cuts. Smaller and midsized distilleries have let production staff go, but these are in limited numbers. It’s still a terrible time for them – not so long ago people were being encouraged to train in whiskey production as there was a shortage of skilled workers here, and now many of those making cuts are in rural areas. Losing your distillery job in Dublin isn’t too bad – losing it in Ballynowhere is a bit harder to bounce back from. But pretending this isn’t happening will not help anyone – not the category, not the workers being laid off, not the investors.
This is not investment advice. It isn’t even advice in what not to invest in, just a series of observations based on my own experience of buying and selling whiskey casks. It’s important to get that out front and centre because while the Irish whiskey category has generated a lot of buzz and drawn in a lot of speculators, a whole bunch of people threw money into things they didn’t quite understand – bottles, distilleries, and casks. I’m not about to contribute to that, because if there is a bubble in Irish whiskey, it’s deflating, and those who were drawn in by the promise of riches are about to enter their finding-out phase.
Seven years ago I had a few quid to spare. We had been struggling for a few years, but while we were asset rich we were cash poor. We sold a house, poured money into another one, and then had a couple of quid left over. I spotted an opportunity to join the West Cork Distillers cask co-op. It offered casks at wholesale prices to ordinary punters like me – there would be buybacks and cask swaps, along with an online marketplace where you could trade casks with other members. The most appealing part of this was that I knew the distillery, knew the owners, had been through the whole site and had written extensively about them. They had mature product on the shelves so I could try their existing whiskey, and they also had a thriving clear spirits range and a sideline in ingredients. They were, from their foundation well over a decade before, aiming to be Ireland’s MGPi; a hardworking distillery that just wanted to make good booze, and not rip people off. Buying casks from them was not without risk, but overall, it was a solid proposition. But bear in mind, I did this knowing that I could lose all my money. I had set aside €10,000 or so to play with, and so I put most of this into nine casks. Here is the breakdown:
I paid €8,827.76 for nine casks of whiskey – four single malt, four single pot still, and one grain. The new make malt cost €3,343.88; the new make single pot still spirit cost €3,263.85; and the new make grain came in at €712.53. The casks themselves cost €1,215 in total, and the cost of purchasing them worked out as 9 X €135. Casking cost €292.50 as the cost of filling each of the nine was €32.50. All casks were held at the WCD bonded warehouses and covered by insurance policies in the name of WCD for an amount up to the original price paid for the purchase of the cask certificate representing that cask. So should something happen to the casks, I get the initial purchase price back, not the value at time of loss. I pay annual storage charges, the most recent of which was €216 for all nine casks.
Buying the casks was a bit of fun – it was not part of any kind of investment, or plan, just something I thought might be a bit of craic. At the most recent valuation by Hilco for the distillery, the casks were worth a total of €18,171. I opted to free up some cash last summer so I sold two casks of five year old single pot still back to the distillery for €1,985 each. The other two casks of five year old single pot still I opted to swap for four casks of new make, this time opting for single malt. So I had my bit of money, and still had nine casks, albeit with a lower total valuation. It should be noted that five of the casks are for my four kids and my godchild so I can’t cash in the lot or they would lynch me.
Perhaps you are reading this and thinking, wow, all those ads you saw on Facebook are right – there is money to be made in whiskey casks. Well, kind of – it is a tradeable commodity, not an especially liquid one, and for most people, it is confusing, complex, and ultimately a very, very risky way to spend. I did so knowing I could lose every cent, but also knowing a little bit about the industry and about the vendor itself. I dealt directly with the distillery and they have been great, every step of the way. But those ads on Facebook, or at the top of your search results when you google certain terms, are horribly misleading. They misuse stats and research that has nothing to do with casks – the Knight Frank luxury index tracks niche investments and while it measured how whisky had grown in value, it was whisky bottled under brands that was being followed, not casks. These entities – which misused these stats to the point that Knight Frank had to distance themselves from them – lure ordinary people in with the promise of great riches, get their phone numbers before they even vaguely outline the costs of the deal, and then pummel the phones using hard sell tactics to force casks of new make from often-unremarkable or unproven distilleries onto consumers who have no idea what they are doing. Worse than this, they often sell these by the pallet of six, and at prices upwards of €2,300 per cask, it will be a long, long time until those casks even come close to turning a profit, and that is before we even consider the global downturn in whiskey consumption, an ongoing cost of living crisis, or any number of trade wars or the ongoing, actual war in Ukraine. The slowdown in the production by Bushmills and Great Northern, and the halting of production for three months by Midleton may be based on future predictions about sales but it has a cooling effect in the short term. Irish whiskey, as a category, will find its equilibrium eventually – but casks may not rise in value as mine did.
So where do these mom and pop investors who bought pallets of casks sell their white elephants? Not on the open market anyway. I asked Revenue about a few issues around casks and this was what they told me in relation to selling casks of whiskey:
“The sale of whiskey casks may only take place in a premises and by a person licensed for such sale. The statutory provisions governing the sale, supply and consumption of intoxicating liquor in licensed premises are set out in the Licensing Acts 1833 to 2018 and are the responsibility of the Department of Justice. Revenue’s role is confined to that of a tax administration i.e. the collection of the relevant taxes and duties and the issue of the relevant excise licences. Under this licensing code, persons who sell, take orders, or deal in intoxicating liquor are required to hold the appropriate Liquor Licence in order to trade legitimately. It is an offence under Section 50 of the Finance Act (1909-1910) Act 1910, to make, manufacture, deal wholesale, or sell by retail, any intoxicating liquor without the appropriate excise licence.
“There is no restriction on the purchase of whiskey casks by persons for non-commercial purposes however, it is not legal for a private unlicensed individual, investor or otherwise, to sell a cask of whiskey on the open market.”
As for the oft-touted claim by the investment set that casks are capital gains tax free, this is what Revenue told me: “Alcohol sold within the State is subject to of Alcohol Products Tax (APT) and Value-Added Tax (VAT). The application of excise duty on alcohol is governed within an overall EU legislative framework. The primary directives are Directive 92/83/EEC (as amended) and Council Directive 2020/262/EU including the control and movement of excisable products. The corresponding national legislation can be found in Part 2 of Finance Act 2003 and Part 2 of Finance Act 2001.
“Liability for APT arises either when product is imported into the State, or if a duty suspension arrangement applies, when the product is released for consumption from duty suspension arrangements in Ireland. These duty-suspended movements are controlled by Revenue and all other tax authorities within the EU to protect tax revenues using the Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS).
“It should be noted that the Northern Ireland protocol ensures that the abovementioned EU excise law and thus the above administrative controls continue to apply in Northern Ireland.
“Profits arising from the carrying on of a trade are chargeable to tax under Case I. Whether the profits from the sale of whiskey casks is carried on in the course of a trade is a question of fact having regard to the particular facts and circumstances of each case and also having regard to the ‘badges of trade’ and case law.
“Should the purchase and sale of whiskey casks take place other than in the course of a trade, i.e. as a form of investment, the disposal of such whiskey casks may be subject to Capital Gains Tax (CGT).
“In general, CGT is chargeable on a gain arising on the disposal of an asset at the rate of 33 per cent. The first €1,270 of chargeable gains of an individual in any year are exempt from CGT. All gains are chargeable gains unless otherwise provided for by Capital Gains Tax Acts, and any such gains are liable to CGT, subject to any reliefs and/or exemptions which may be available in the context of the disposal giving rise to the gain.”
Given that a number of cask investment operations claim to have sold thousands of casks of Irish whiskey to ordinary punters as investments, I asked Revenue what their stance was on CGT: “It appears from the details supplied that whiskey casks may be considered an asset for the purposes of CGT, and so any gains arising on the disposal of whiskey casks, other than in the course of a trade, may be considered a chargeable gain. Any CGT liability arising in respect of such a gain may be relieved or exempted in accordance with current legislation.”
If it is the case that there are thousands, or tens of thousands of casks being held in warehouses on the island of Ireland in the names of private individuals who purchased them as investments, then Revenue are going to be interested. This isn’t quietly trading old Lego sets or stamps or sneakers on eBay – this is trying to shift massive wooden containers of hard liquor and unless you are a semi-professional bootlegger I would suggest that Revenue will track you down eventually. If, within the next five years, all those casks start getting shoved onto the market via auction sites, the great glowing eye of the State will swivel towards every auction site in the country.
As for me, my casks will sit there doing not much. They may go up in value, they may go down. As I said at the outset, this isn’t investment advice because the casks weren’t an investment, more an experiment by someone who likes whiskey. In whiskey there are no shortcuts and anyone thinking they can get rich quick in it would really be better off just studying the secondary market and speculating on bottles rather than casks.
There has been a significant knock on from the rise of the investment set – many distilleries here hoped to replicate Dingle’s founding fathers programme which saw them sell casks to private individuals, not necessarily as investments, but more as a fan club membership, with an annual gathering in the distillery and the chance to bottle your cask down the road. But whereas most of these cask clubs had offerings from €6,000 to €10,000 per cask, the hard-sell crowd offered a lower price – so there is at least one distillery I know of that faced a seven million euro gap in their business plan because they couldn’t shift casks. They then attempted to hire someone specifically to flog casks as investments. But the moment has now passed.
Aside from this there is the reputational damage to distilleries – one Irish distillery has been named repeatedly in the press as being the source of casks which were mis-sold or which are failing to sell at auction. The knock-on from their name being tarnished could then impact the value of all the other casks they have allowed to be sold to these uninformed investors.
In the UK, this issue has seen the Scotch Whisky Association take a firm stance, offering advice on their website about things to look out for when buying a cask. The UK press also has been giving coverage to the crisis, and tonight, BBC Scotland runs a Disclosures special investigation titled Chasing The Whisky Bandits, followed by a podcast series on the topic. Even Reddit has done some leg work in warning people off seeing casks as an investment.
There is a distinct lack of alarm in Ireland about the issue or any potential fallout from it – but if we get painted as wheeler dealers who engaged in and facilitated widespread cask investment fraud, then we will only have ourselves to blame. Irish whiskey’s reputation is in a delicate state – a lot of young, very expensive whiskey, a lot of old, also expensive whiskey from one of three sources, a lot of misleading messaging on labels and around sourced brands, and a dangerous level of hype; all this make us an easy target for scammers. All those witless headlines about ‘the Irish whiskey boom’ made useful fodder for anyone promising that a cask from some unproven distillery would only rise in value. The glory days, however, are coming to an end, and all those casks will need to be six to ten years old before the ‘investors’ can even break even. And even then, who will they sell to?
Sun Tzu said that if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will eventually float by. It could also be said that if you wait by the great golden river that is the whiskey industry long enough, every blogger, podcaster, and commenter will float by on a gilt bier eventually. This is the way of the industry – if you have a voice and know how to use it, they will want to use it too. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have been subsumed into the whiskey business – maybe some of us who start blogs or social media accounts dedicated to whiskey always have it in the back of our minds that hey, maybe it would be fun to work in the industry. Others come with an oven-ready business plan. This is the ebb and flow – but after a decade of blogging, I’ve had a few run-ins over the years that make me glad I don’t work in whiskey. Sometimes it’s public relations SNAFUs, sometimes it’s producers themselves just behaving shoddily. Some examples:
A few years back, a whiskey producer took it upon himself to sue another whiskey producer for defamation. They hired a lawyer to send threatening letters to the producer over a comment they made, but, and this is the part that baffles me, they also included a list of other accounts in the legal threats, accounts which had nothing to do with any disagreement between the two producers. It came as something of a surprise to see my name featured, along with a number of other bloggers and writers, as I had nothing to do with this person or their whiskey brand. The funniest part of the whole affair (which ended up being resolved outside court) was that my Twitter account got locked because of the legal threats, and at the exact moment this happened, I was at a whiskey launch where the person behind the action happened to be in attendance, sitting about 15 feet away from me.
For the most part, PR firms are great to work with, and having interned in a PR firm one summer about three decades ago, I know how hard they work at what they do. It is a thankless, gruelling job where a lot of time you eat shit from the press, from clients, from everyone. But sometimes it’s the other way around. I asked a PR for comment from a client, telling them it was only for a blog piece and so there was no pressure but I had to ask. They responded by telling me their client was very busy but that they would ask again at a later date. This is where my part in this mess comes in – I saw the ‘again’ and thought that the PR had asked the client for comment and they had declined, so that was what I put in the piece. Hit publish and away we go. A couple of hours later, PR rings, and a tense conversation ensues in which they explain that they didn’t ask the client for comment at all. I apologise and say I misinterpreted their email. Then, PR keeps going – admonishes me for coming to them for comment from their client in the first place, telling me they are not the person to contact for this despite the fact they were happy to provide comment for print pieces previously and they are, after all, a PR person. After I had been given out to for a few minutes, they put forward the suggestion that the best way to remedy this was that they would go back to the client and tell them that I had never contacted them for comment at all. In other words, they would go and tell their client that I had simply made up the quote. I said, no, that is not a good idea, and we ended the call. The problem is that I actually don’t know if they did follow through with their clever plan and tell the client that I never bothered to contact at all, but given the last invite I received to an event being held by the client was rescinded an hour after I got it, I am going to say, maybe.
Much as I love PR people, I’m not sure they are the people you should be commissioning to write features for print. I have seen one PR repeatedly write massive glowing features about a large client of theirs without mentioning the connection – or the fact that what the paper was printing was technically sponsored content. Another PR writes listicles that repeatedly mention clients. If I can see it by only knowing one or two PRs and their clients, then I am going to assume it is a lot more widespread than that. And even if they aren’t mentioning their own clients, who says they aren’t touting for business by heaping praise on other firms? It also sucks because it diminishes the value of a newspaper, and because the PR is getting paid on the double; by the client for the coverage, and by the paper for the copy. Yes, I still have lofty notions about the business of news, but I just think running copy which may or may not be a massive ad is poor form. There are great young writers out there who deserve a break.
That list could run and run. There is a pretty jaw-dropping piece about a drinks publicist which every brand owner should read. I don’t think anyone can wash their hands of the PR firm they choose to rep them and I don’t think any PR firm can wash their hands of their clients no matter how appalling they are. Everyone is a grown-up and everyone knows what they are doing when they choose a PR firm, and every PR makes the same informed choice in taking on a client. So if a PR firm is simply irritating or openly obnoxious to a journalist or drinks writer or anyone, is the writer likely to approach them again for comment? Similarly, journalists and drinks writers can be the absolute worst, entitled, obnoxious, demanding, unbearable brats, so it does work both ways.
But all the bodies eventually float by. Podcasts, blogs, even social media accounts – the most ephemeral of engagements – often dry up as after a while you kinda run out of things to say about whiskey, or you run out of the energy required to keep going. Shared blogs tend to collapse under their own weight as people fall out, or life takes over, podcasts run out of people to talk to, and all the discourse runs out of steam because you end up saying the same things about the same products (I am certainly guilty of that). The mainstream press is also guilty of the same – this time of year there is a crescendo of Irish whiskey coverage and much of it fails to ask the tough question – after Jameson, what now, after America, where then, after the slump, who survives? It probably says a lot about where Irish whiskey is that we don’t have the same rich discourse that Scotch or Bourbon have, and we are poorer for it.
I got a reminder from WordPress that they have been hosting my dithering for ten years now, but for the most part I have only managed a few posts a year since Covid hit. My joy and enthusiasm in the earlier posts when I was just starting to write about Irish whiskey has waned and for the most part I look at the category now with a pretty jaundiced eye. I think there are many structural weaknesses in the sector and I can’t fix them nor can I find anyone else who wants to as much as I. A few years back I wrote a piece about how bright the future would be when we had a rich ecosystem of bloggers, but what we have now is a lot of DM-for-collab style influencers and others who are really just outsourced marketing for the industry. When brands and producers become clients, your words lose value.
Will this blog exist in another ten years, will I still be posting about Irish whiskey, or will it all dry up and blow away as many whiskey blogs do? I still spend more time thinking about the stuff than I do drinking it, and even with a reduced output I still spend more time writing about it than drinking it, so there is life in the old dog yet. The grim times we now inhabit have actually got me interested in it again – the decade of backslapping is over, and it’s time to take stock – can we use this moment to improve the offering, what do people want from Irish whiskey, is it simply whiskey from Ireland or is there more to it, to us? Have we been coasting on our charm, our national identity, in one market and can we replicate that success elsewhere? How do you pitch Irish whiskey to someone in Asia, Africa, South America – do we continue to trade on the shamrocks and shillelaghs, or forty shades of green? Is ‘Brand Ireland’ that well known?
The Scots have single malt, what do we have? Single pot still is too complicated and the name alone gives me a headache, as, aside from anything, it kinda implies that it is made using only one still, or is distilled only once, or that all other Irish whiskey is column distilled. And once you have explained that the name doesn’t mean what you think it means, you get to bore people into submission with a talk about 18th century cereal taxation policy.
Maybe the shakeout of the category is a good time to reflect on what Irish whiskey needs to be. We spent too long pushing ourselves as ‘not Scotch’ (even the single pot still spiel begins with, ‘well you know single malt right…’) and need to find an identity beyond that. Unpeated, triple distilled and smooth were all part of the not-scotch pitch, so what is Irish whiskey now?
I arrive at Ballykeefe in late summer 2024. Expecting to find throngs of tourists, I’m greeted by an empty car park. No tour buses, no campervans, no cars, no bikes. Many distilleries in Ireland push hard on tourism as a driver of both revenue and brand awareness. Not Ballykeefe. Theirs is a different approach.
I wonder if I got the date for my visit right until owner, farmer, and head distiller Morgan Ging appears, and explains how they changed their strategy on tours. Prior to the pandemic they had many tour buses lining up outside, but the lockdowns gave them space to think hard on whether they wanted to be a tourism hotspot/glorified toilet stop for busloads of international visitors, or something more low key, more targeted.
“Covid changed everything for us – we had people here employed, with coaches coming in, but with the figures at the end of it, it wasn’t worth it,” Ging explains.
“What we did enjoy here prior to covid was the high-end tours. So covid was over and we slowly reopened to the tours part of it but I only did the high-end tours and was looking for someone to manage it for me, but then I started to enjoy these high end tours because the people are really into whiskey. So now the gates closed, now you have to ring up, no hens, no stags, no large groups or anything like that, just high-end tours, private ones.
“A lot of those are just extremely wealthy people, and we just host them for an afternoon and that is working perfectly well for us. They want to meet me, as distiller and owner, and they love the story. They get to see the farm, get to see the whole place, and we are very happy with that. Not huge revenue, but for me it’s great for the auld head that you are meeting people who are interested in the business, in what we do, in the spirits, the tasting of them, hearing the story.
“It’s not a generic tour; today our tour will be one way and tomorrow the tour could be something totally different we talk about. It’s unscripted. So I have to keep myself fresh, I talk about the trials and tribulations of the day to the people who come in, and tomorrow it could be something else, and everyone wants to hear stories they won’t hear anywhere else. And that keeps me fresh, keeps the business fresh. So the tourism part of the business at the very start was going to be very important, but today it is very important in that it is people who want to be here. Serious whiskey heads.”
Bus tour companies continued to offer them slots but Ging declined, saying that ‘it’s not Ballykeefe’. The question then is, what is Ballykeefe?
Back in the late 1980s, Ging was working on the family farm with his father – it was harvest time, and things weren’t going great for them: “Bad weather, bad yield, bad protein, know yourself just one of those seasons. And I said to dad, what about adding value to what we do, and he said what do you mean, and I said what about making whiskey, and he said if you want to do it go ahead, he says I won’t stop you. So this was back in ‘89, ‘90, but we couldn’t get the license.”
The idea of making whiskey had come from a library book Ging was reading, which tracked the rise and fall of Irish whiskey, and he was fascinated by the fact the drink went from the number one spirit in the world to struggling to survive in the 1970s. In his mind he wanted to make a very specific type of whiskey – as it was made a century ago, rather than the newer iteration, which boasted grain spirit and blending. In his research he found repeated mentions of one tasting note that was particular to single pot still Irish whiskey as it was made at the turn of the century.
“Jameson is a great product and that, but it’s not the way Irish whiskey was hundreds of years ago – Irish whiskey hundreds of years ago was made from malted barley, unmalted barley, distilled in a certain way, brewed in a certain way, aged, and away we went. And there was a beautiful aniseed flavour to it. I designed my equipment here bespoke for Ballykeefe to put back that aniseed flavour in it – the way I brew, the way I ferment, the way I distill.
“What I wanted to do here when the license became available was to build a small distillery to work and make whiskey for myself and maybe sell it locally but it was never focussed on world domination. It was about making the spirit, the art of making whiskey and all the different flavours you can extract from it.”
In 2002 Morgan and his wife Anne bought the land upon which they founded Ballykeefe farm. To fund the venture, the couple juggled multiple jobs while expanding their farm from beef production into tillage. However, crises such as the bull beef and horse meat scandals took a toll on the industry and on them, prompting Morgan to revisit his dream of diversification. During a crunch meeting with his accountant, he mentioned his desire to start a distillery. She provided him with a customs officer’s contact, and that afternoon, the officer visited Ballykeefe and told them the plan should be viable — provided that proper planning permissions were in place. Ging removed an old hay shed and lean-to and replaced it with a distillery which sits between a cowshed and the family home. He always wanted this to be part of the farm, part of the family. But the distillery he ended up with was far larger than he had envisioned.
“The issue for me was at the time that the licensing laws stated you must have a minimum of an 1,800-litre still,” he says, gesturing at his stills. The law has since changed and smaller stills are allowed, but if Ging was to build when he did, he would have to create a distillery larger than the hobbyist scale he had planned in his head.
“A set minimum, so I had to commit – if I was to fulfill my dream of distilling my own liquid this is what I had to build. You can have smaller stills now in a lot of the distilleries, the new ones that open would be very small, and not commercially viable in my opinion.”
Once he had the permits, he needed the kit, and was fortunate enough to know Peter Clancy, a rep for Barison Industry in Italy, who are distillery designers. Peter – who went on to open his own distillery, Lough Ree – introduced Ging to the owner of Barison Industry, Graziano, who came to Kilkenny and worked out the entire design with Morgan.
“In fairness to him he was a very patient man,” Ging laughs. Part of his design meant he wanted an extra plate within the lauter tun, a kind of sieve: “So the very, very expensive plate in there had to be laser coated and all that but if you take the turbidity say down in Waterford or Dingle or Midleton, it’s a clear liquid going across. My liquid looks like a cup of strong tea without milk in it, that beautiful reddy orangey colour. Thats where im getting my flavour profile from, I’m losing spirit yield, but gaining spirit flavour profile. If Diageo owned this place it would be run totally different, it would be run on spirit yield, but because Morgan has it, it’s run on flavour.
“I also do four temperature changes in the mash vessel. Normally it’s two to three, I do four. There is different turbidity coming out of it. So this place is set up so that it’s a one man show – I didn’t want people in there influencing what I did. It’s designed in such a way that myself and Graziano and Peter sat down, we designed the grain mill, brewery, fermentations, still, so I’m here and I can control everything in one spot.
“Everything is hard-piped, we don’t have any loose pipes lying around the floors here so that goes all the way up around there, down here, in through the floor plate and I can send it anywhere I want, so it’s only a matter of adjusting the pipes.
“Graziano said we could reduce the price, take this out, put in overground pipes, and I said no, we will do it once and then that’s it, pay for it over a period of time.”
Ging was just as precise about what he wanted from his stills, again with the sole intent of isolating that aniseed note: “The neck is a little taller than it should be for the size of the pot, that’s part of my design. The more copper contact you have for the sulphates, the cleaner the spirit. Then my line arm is more or less on level, so what I’m trying to avoid is, you know that tangy aftertaste you get with some whiskies, so that’s the oils, those heavier oils. So if you come down at an angle, you’ll run these very quickly,” he says, gesturing at the stills.
“That’s the big cost of distilleries, running these, it’s boiling your kettles basically. So if you run it down, you’ll save yourself a huge amount of money. Whereas I have it bang in the middle; what that does, it sends some of those heavier oils back into the still, and it prevents them from going forward. So I bring through the lighter oils, the more flavoursome ones, into my spirit. As I said, if the accountant sat down with me at the start he would say ‘no no, you’re angling that down, no no, you can run this faster, no you’re not doing that’. Whereas for me, it was a case that this is what I want to do, this is how I want to achieve it, this is what I have. So it’s actually only about six millimetres of an incline in those, it’s just to prevent alcohol from lying in the back.”
With the distillery complete and commissioned in 2017, Ging hired master distiller Jamie Baggott who developed their white spirit range. Once they were set up and running, Baggott departed, and since 2018 Ging has been the head distiller, albeit a self taught one. He says he deliberately stayed away from the usual distilling qualifications obtained from Heriot Watt in Scotland.
“I purposely didn’t because I had learned enough, I was self taught over the years what I wanted, and one of the reasons, I had applied to Heriot Watt and I went to myself, you’re going to learn how to make scotch whisky. And for me….I had no interest in making tequila, I have no interest in making bourbon, at the moment all I wanted to do was make whiskey the way it was made hundreds of years ago – I had researched that and i had learned it and the guys hundreds of years ago they didn’t go off to do a brewing course and learn all the different ethanols and the breakdowns of the spirit and all that, they worked on the flavour profiles and the taste that was coming off the still, was it right or was it wrong, all that. I taught myself that.
“Right or wrong, I don’t know. But that’s Irish whiskey, it’s not influenced in any way by English, Scottish or American, any of that. It is made by an Irish guy who researched how it was done years ago without any influence from the outside world. So you could pick me up, land me back a couple of hundred years ago, and I would fit in lovely with the boys back then making whiskey. But if you pick me up and land me in Scotland, I won’t fit in, because I don’t know how they do it, or understand, or want to. But pick me up and throw me back a couple of hundred years ago, me and the guys would have great craic making the whiskey.”
“So for me it’s all about extracting the different flavours for a tweak in the equipment to do that – it’s not about volume and it’s not about commercialism. So if you go down to any of the others, Clonakilty, Waterford, it’s all about volume, it’s a business.
“For me it’s different – if this had to be a good business, I wouldn’t be doing it. I’m not interested. I’m only interested in the quality of the spirit I can produce and in doing so I will charge extra for my product. We’re not under any financial pressure, so it will be there on the shelf. And if it doesn’t go into a bottle today, it’s a year older next year and it’s more valuable.
“So financial pressure is not an issue here. It’s all about having a product that is exceptional and I’ve entered some of the competitions in the US spirits ratings and all those things and I’ve got 94 or 95 points, people are happy with what comes out.”
Ging does give a nod to Waterford’s celebration and elevation of terroir, the concept that wines have a sense of place, that the location of the vineyards has an impact on flavour. For Ging, this place is his own farm, where all his grain comes from.
“So if you take the guys down in Waterford, what they are doing is they take this particular grain from this particular farm in this particular area with this particular soil type, they distill that and you will get a unique flavour to it.
“What I do is, I have my own field, grow my own grain but what I’m doing is controlling the inputs. I’m controlling how it is cared for, I’m controlling the protein. I don’t want a real low protein, I don’t want a real hgh protein, I want something in the middle that can give me a flavour profile; real low protein will give you a higher yield, that’s why distillers protein is always lower for a higher spirit yield, brewers protein is a bit higher because you get a lot more flavours from the product. I’m right bang in the middle because I adjust my crop growing season to be bang in the middle.
“I’m losing on spirit yield but I’m gaining on spirit profile. It’s all about the profile of the spirit, that is what I am worried about.
“And then other things I do that are personal to me are; there are aphids that attack spring barley every year but if you spray for the aphids it kills the ladybugs and the spiders and all the other insects. I refuse to spray for it. I lose five to ten percent grain yield by not spraying for the aphids but I sleep ok at night. Things like that which people don’t see are important to me. I don’t go making a big scene about it and blowing about it all over social media and that, I’m not into that.
“So what works for me is I have one field allocated to the malt for the distillery, and because I have that field now trained, as such, to produce what I want, I know what works in it because of the soil structure and how to do it, because even though it’s quite a large field there part of it, it’s sandy, there’s part of it is loamy, so I adjust my fertiliser, I adjust everything, so I have that bang on where I want it now. But then in other parts of the farm I grow rye and I grow oats for the distillery so that’s where I play with my ingredients.
“So that’s where it gets very interesting, I’ve done 100% malted rye, I’ve done 100% unmalted rye with enzymes, I’ve done 51% rye or as they call them in the United States straight rye, I’ve done oats, I’ve done variations of oats with malted barley and with unmalted barley. Basically, I can do what I want because it’s mine. If you were in a commercial business then you’d have to talk to the boss to do what i’m doing, whereas i can just.. I’m like the guys in Moonshiners, you know, this recipe today, so that’s where this is set up, that is why I do it, because I can.
“So when I woke up in the morning back in 2017 I decided that I might grow some rye. I did research on rye whiskeys and flavour profiles and everything in it and I grew a crop of rye on the farm here and I got it malted with the guys in Minch Malt and then made whisky out of it. Now I should have released that whiskey. I had it old enough to release prior to when Irish Distillers [released their Method & Madness rye and malt], I could have released a year before those guys, but as I said, I’m not into the commercial stuff, chasing sales, what difference does it make? I have the first rye in Ireland and that’s all I know. And I know I have an excellent rye because I have given tasting to different groups that come in here and people love it. It’s just a matter of getting the finger out now and putting it in a bottle.”
But putting the whiskey in a bottle is something he is in no rush to do, as he explained: “Our distributor in America wanted everything we had, and I said no no no no, and the reason is that I want a stockpile of whiskey that’s ten years old. When I have the ten year olds there, that’s when I release a lot more. It’s not about shoving it out the door today, and then what do you do tomorrow? Ballykeefe is a distillery that is unique in a way – it’s not a massive commercial distillery, it’s more about the love of the art of distilling. And when we get to a ten year old with the whiskeys we’ll have the rye, we’ll have the oats and it’ll be released then.”
If he seems nonchalant about the commercial side of the distillery, it might be because he is a farmer first, a calling which is part vocation, part vexation, part hex. Farmers are bound to the land and it to them – as Ging notes, farmers now have burdens that previous generations did not: “You have a lot more stress in farming today than when my father was farming, or my grandfather. Because if you had a bad year, your outgoings were small. If you have a bad year now, your outgoings are massive. The last new tractor my father bought was about 15,000 euros, the last new tractor we bought here was 200,000. And there’s no way around this, there actually no way around this.
“When the Ukraine crisis kicked off, fertiliser went from a couple of hundred euros a tonne to 1,200 euros a tonne. There isn’t a middle margin there to take profit for the farmer, because you’re a price taker, you’re not a price maker. This year (2024) the tillage farmers are under huge pressure, one, they got very late sowing of the crops so yield will be back, and the price has gone through the floor. So it’s a very difficult game and then in the beef end of things there was no grass growth worth a damn up until now nearly.
“So animals didn’t thrive, so you’re down 100 kilos a head on your animal and if you’re in the margin and you’re getting three euro a kilo that’s three hundred euro down. That’s you know you’re into negative business then. And that’s why the majority of farmers’ wives are actually working. Farming is more as a disease and people just stay going because they don’t want to be the one to give up. As Kevin Costner said in Yellowstone, ranching in america is the only business where you hope to break even so that you can ranch again for the following year. You know a lot of farming has gone that way. And people don’t realise there’s only two weeks of food in the country. So if anything major happens in the world the shelves have only two weeks food. Okay, Ireland is self-sufficient in milk, cheese, meat, we’re not too bad, but the avocados and all those other nice things we like….”
He says that while farm distilleries are not especially common now, a hundred years ago they were: “There were a lot of family farm distilleries hundreds of years ago, they grew their own grain, they malted it, made their own whiskey and then the byproducts went to feel their animals, their pigs, their cattle, their sheep, whatever on the farm, so they had zero waste. I have zero waste.
“When I went at this project in 2015 there was nothing much about global warming, just Al Gore going on, and everyone thought he was crazy, and it turned out to be correct. But I put in a lot of things here that were not necessary to put in at the time, heat recovery, zero waste policies, so from the time I sow the grain in the field there is nothing leaves here except a bottle of whiskey.
“There’s no waste lorries leaving this premises, I literally use everything on the farm, byproducts to feed the animals and any washdown and that, I have a big tank outside with a computerised system that neutralises the ph and I land spread that so I have a zero waste policy. Pot ale goes to the cattle, distillers grain goes to the cattle, the spent lees and that, which is just the still water high in copper, all that is land spread. So I’ve managed to make a nice circle of the business here so the farm produces for the distiller and the distillery produces for the farm.”
The beef from Ging’s distillers’ grain-fed Hereford and Angus cattle, known for its marbling and flavor, is dry-aged for 28 days and distributed across Europe and Ireland. Even the straw from the barley harvest is repurposed as bedding for cattle, later becoming fertilizer for new crops, reinforcing Ballykeefe’s commitment to sustainability, which also motivated his refusal to release a sourced whiskey. It’s a practice not without controversy, as sourced liquids are often sold under the brand of a distillery where it was not made, or sold by a distillery under an adjacent brand, the messaging around which is often opaque and misleading as to the source. Of the 47+ distilleries making whiskey in Ireland, only a handful do not source.
“I made a huge decision to start in that I wasn’t taking in anyone else’s liquid. Sustainability. Guaranteeing what product it is, where it comes from, so if it’s in a Ballykeefe bottle it’s from Ballykeefe and I can stand over it so if you have a problem with the liquid come talk to me, it’s my liquid. I can stand over all of it – how it was produced, where it was produced, and the environmental aspect of it. If I take in someone else’s liquid I have no control over any of that. And I didnt get into this business to sell other people’s products – I got into this business to make whiskey to the best of my ability, and that’s what we’ve done here.”
He is also not obsessed with volume, preferring to let the distillation sit within his busy life as a farmer, and a father of four, preferring to only distill around 42 weeks of the year: “You might think I’m totally crazy, but I work when I want to.
“I get up at 5am in the morning, I open up out here and I turn on the still and charge the still and I go out and turn on the boiler, I get back in the still is full the boiler is running and then i go in and have the breakfast, then feed the cattle, keep an eye on this, I could be finished here, at harvest time I don’t work here because we are busy on the farm, and springtime when planting time comes in I shut this for a couple of weeks and go do that. I like what I do, I like the flexibility of it, like if this was owned by Diageo you’d be on a 9-5 Monday to Friday. It’s not for me.
“When I go out it gives me an idea when I come in here, so for instance, I think about the botanicals for the gin; I’d often be off in the tractor working or I could be in the mart and something just comes to me – yeah you need to increase the peppercorn, you need to increase the grapefruit peel…It just comes to me because I never rush into it. It just comes to me and I go yeah that’s what I have to do when I go back.”
This approach means that despite being able to produce a potential 600 casks a year, he is happy with the number he makes: “This can do between four to six hundred a year, if you want to go flat out you’ll get 600, but nice and handy what I do is about 400. But what we did when the crisis on he fuel hit the gas bill went through the roof but we had a contract with Calor which was good, it wasn’t on price it was on a date, so I burst my hump and made all I could up to that date and then stopped because it just wasn’t feasible. Now that it’s down, we’re back producing again so we didn’t lose our volume, we still have the volumes on it. So you just have to work around with what you do.”
They have more than a thousand casks in storage right there on the farm, in a warehouse next to the cowshed. They are happy with their sales, their reach, and Morgan clearly feels an immense sense of pride in the farm, the distillery, and his family. He tells me about one Christmas when a large order came in with a rush on and how all the family got involved in packing the order, and then sat in the kitchen with sandwiches and tea at midnight. As he says, special memories.
The distillery features from time to time in mainstream press, more often in agricultural publications, and once on a TV show called The Great Giveback where Morgan and Anne helped a family whose mother had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. As an entirely field to glass operation, Ballykeefe ticks all the branding and marketing boxes – terroir, transparency, tradition – yet seem happy enough to quietly keep farming and distilling without much promotion. This, combined with their highly targeted tourism offering means they are something of a well-kept secret – whiskey lovers might find it frustrating just how low key he is, but this is, after all, his choice. He’s happy to keep tipping away.
“I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, what I wanted to do was just take us from where we were totally commercial and as I said only for Pernod Ricard taking the brand Jameson and making it a world success, there’d be no market for this. So you have to say thank you to those guys. But at the same time, Irish whiskey, which they are selling their product under the label of was a way different product when it was famous. And that’s what I wanted to go back to. I just want to go back to that, yeah, you do your stuff, that’s perfect, there is room for everyone. But this is my little niche, this is what I’m doing.
“When people come here to talk to me they are interested in the distillery and what I’m doing, I explain all this to them and they are extremely happy going off and walking out that door as brand ambassadors for Ballykeefe, and the amount of business that has come back through the door because of those people because they go and say it to someone or connect with someone and one thing leads to another and you get your reward that way.
“We’re in America, Germany, France, and Italy, we are all over the place without making a huge noise and scene. I had a friend who was in the south of Italy cycling, and he called into a little restaurant, and he looked up at the bar and there was a Ballykeefe gin, whiskey and vodka sitting behind the bar. That gives you incentive to keep going.”
It’s not just Irish whiskey. We are not the only ones struggling, the only ones being left on the shelf. In the classic breakup style, it’s not us, it’s them, where them is anyone who enjoys an adult beverage. People are drinking less all over the world, there is a move among younger people towards more moderate drinking (which is good) rather than the Covid binges (which were bad) or the decades previous when people of my generation absolutely leathered it (which was very bad). Times change, and people change with it; a global cost of living crisis and greater focus on health and wellness means people are not spending as much as they used to on booze, and if they do, it’s not whiskey they are buying. And this significant fall off in demand means supply has to adjust.
Great Northern Distillery (GND) in Dundalk is one of the biggest producers on the island. Founded by industry legend Dr John Teeling after he sold Cooley to Beam Suntory, GND boasts both a grain plant with a capacity of 12 million litres, and a malt plant with an eight million litre capacity. This makes GND the second-largest distilling complex in Ireland, and their strategy revolves around supplying mature and new make malt, pot still, and grain bulk whiskey to customers who have their own brands of Irish whiskey, offering products ranging from new make to 18-year-old whiskeys. GND distils the equivalent of one million bottles of whiskey each week, serving more than 300 customers who operate worldwide. Late last year it was revealed that Great Northern Distillery enjoyed pre-tax profits of €32m.
Even that doesn’t capture how much output – or potential output – the industry has, as in 2023 Bushmills opened their new €43.5 million Causeway Distillery, more than doubling their production capacity from five million litres of alcohol per annum to 11m litres per annum. They also have planning permission for a new grain distillery.
This table shows sales by case:
Critics of the Irish whiskey boom would say that it is really just the Jameson boom – and looking at those figures, you can see why. If the total cases sold in a year is 15.5 million, and more than ten million of them are Jameson, you have a boom based on one brand making up two thirds of all sales. Jameson, obviously, is a broad church, and unless you saw a pretty granular breakdown you couldn’t say whether there is a chunk of those that are non-core Jamesons. But I would hazard a guess that the bulk is the core blend – that easy sipping, smooth, affordable and approachable Irish whiskey upon which the category balances. Such was the demand over the last 15 years for this iconic drink that Irish Distillers Ltd started work on a new distillery alongside their current plant in Midleton, the engine room for much of the category since 1975. The proposed expansion will facilitate an increase in production capacity of the distillery across the expanded site from 70 million litres per annum (MLA) to 133 MLA. It was intended to be operational in 2025.
On Thursday last, Irish Distillers Limited announced it was pausing production in the main distillery for three months, telling the Irish Farmers Journal that it was ‘adjusting its production schedule for a routine, periodic review’ but that it would recommence in the summer. On Sunday, the Sunday Times revealed that not only were they pausing production, the completion dates on the new distillery had been pushed out, telling the paper that the timeline of the new distillery had ‘evolved’ but that construction was still progressing on site and Irish Distillers remained ’absolutely committed’ to the new distillery (this may also be a factor in the delay). The same piece in the Times also revealed how Bushmills had slashed production of whiskey, while John Teeling’s Great Northern Distillery had also cut back on malt whiskey production since December. But while the three biggest producers are cutting back, mid-size operators are far more vulnerable to falling sales and rising costs.
In mid-February, the Irish Independent reported that another Waterford-based producer, Blackwater Distillery, was struggling to survive, with a process adviser appointed in an effort to rescue the business. In late February the Irish Independent also reported that Powerscourt Distillery breached a loan agreement with a large US lender after a €4.6m funding round was delayed. All three of these were founded or funded by people who understood whiskey – Mark Reynier had decades of experience with Bruichladdich, Powerscourt had the founders of Isle Of Arran distillery on the board, and Peter Mulryan had spent decades studying the industry as an author and journalist. These were not uninformed prospectors who had blundered their way into the industry. They knew the risks, the rise and fall. But I doubt the words ‘natural lifecycle’ bring much comfort when things get tight, and they are not so small that they can afford to quietly shut until things pick up, nor are they big enough to ride out the storm without hardship. And these are simply the ones we know about.
The few industry people I spoke to about what happens next had an air of cold optimism – that this was, in fact, the natural lifecycle – there was always going to be a crash, always going to be a shakeout, always going to be losses. Not much comfort to anyone who invested in a distillery – either as a professional or casual aficionado (feel free to ask those who bought Nephin casks how they feel about their investment). Reality has sunk its teeth in and is not letting go, and of the 48 or so distilleries that are GI-certified producers of Irish whiskey, the future is not as bright as it was five years ago – below is a list:
We have had ten years of extraordinary growth in the category but what remains to be seen is where the natural level lies for Irish whiskey – how many distilleries can survive the hard times, and in ten or 20 years, how many of the 47 or so will remain. If the current American President applies 25% tariffs on all Irish whiskey, it may be a far lower number than any of us could predict.
In January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Florida. All seven crew died, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, there as part of the ‘Teacher in Space Project’. As a result of her presence on the trip, the launch and the explosion that followed were witnessed live in many schools across the United States. The image of the pinwheeling fragments of the shuttle falling to earth were burned into the minds of a generation.
In his 1987 spoken word album No More Cocoons, former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra did a piece about the tragedy, titled, with his usual subtlety, Why I’m Glad The Space Shuttle Blew Up. In it he mocked the disaster but went on to explain why he was glad that the space shuttle blew up: The next mission of the ill-fated Challenger was to launch the nuclear-powered Ulysses solar probe satellite into orbit in late May; both Ulysses and its companion mission, the Jupiter-bound Galileo probe — also scheduled for launch that spring — contained nearly 50 pounds of plutonium-238 as fuel. Scientists warned that if that radioactive plutonium were released as smoke or dust, say via an in-air explosion, it could pose a severe public health risk to those who inhaled the cancer-causing particles. Dr. John Gofman, a professor of medical physics at UC Berkeley, cautioned that a cloud of plutonium over Cape Canaveral could render parts of Florida uninhabitable. In other words, sometimes a tragedy is better than an apocalypse.
The news that Waterford Distillery had gone into receivership was met with shock by some, a complete lack of surprise by others, and no small amount of glee by those who felt they had it coming – the brand was too aloof, the product too young, too expensive, too pretentious. Terroir was a dead scene, here was the proof. But while there are many, many lessons from the slide into silence of one of Irish whisky’s brightest stars, above all it was a lesson in economics. Rising costs, falling sales, massive debts – this is the hydra headed beast that killed Waterford and it will kill many others as it slouches across the land.
Beyond the mainstream stories of distillers battling to stay open as investors call time, there are numerous rumours of some of the biggest producers either cancelling planned expansions, reducing production, laying off staff, or simply pulling down the shutters, albeit very quietly. When Irish Distillers Limited announced they would be pausing production at Midleton Distillery – which celebrates 50 years of production this year – for three months, it was hard not to read words like ‘scheduled maintenance’ and not raise an eyebrow. The timing would certainly seem to suggest that after a decade of growth, maybe now was the perfect time to shut and repair, because apparently the demand for the product just isn’t there right now. Given that Irish Distillers are constructing a €250 million carbon-neutral distillery adjacent to its existing facility in Midleton, you’d certainly hope it will be again at some point in the future.
There is a global decline in whiskey. The Scotch Whisky Association reported a 3.7% decrease in the value of Scotch whisky exports in 2024, and the value of rare whisky – and whiskey – at auction has also fallen significantly. Just as Waterford’s receivership wasn’t the fault of the distillery or the brand or their outspoken founder Mark Reynier, Irish whiskey is not suffering alone, nor is it entirely to blame for what is happening. People are spending less and drinking less. But if Jameson is slowing, everything is slowing. The rising tide we heard so much about over the last decade – the one which lifts all boats, the effect of which sparked a revolution in Irish whiskey and saw distilleries mushrooming all over the island – is on the way out, and who will be left afloat once it is gone will be very interesting to see.
What I would hope to see is that of the 48 or so (I’m waiting on a full list of GI verified Irish whiskey producers from DAFM) currently operating on the island, 30+ will pull through. One industry veteran half-jokingly said he thinks it will end up that there will be ten multinational owned and ten indies and that will be it, but you would hope the number will be higher. But what we have now is, I assume, what we will have going forward and that any planned distilleries will be hitting pause as well. The problem with the mood shift is that getting funding now for any whiskey related business means you have to contend with someone simply googling ‘Irish whiskey’ and seeing a lot of bad news. People with money will catch a vibe, and take their business elsewhere.
But this moment has been some time coming – early last year I wrote a piece for the Spirits Business that asked – what next for the category? The tone was generally upbeat and most of the voices in the piece had a level of cautious optimism about the future. By the end of summer last year that had changed – rumours of a slowdown abounded, St Patrick’s Day sales in the US were down, costs were rising and distillery staff were starting to appear on LinkedIn delighted to share they were open to new opportunities. Behind the scenes, there was a real fear. Much of it seemed to stem from America – Irish whiskey just wasn’t selling like it had.
By the time the news of Waterford’s receivership broke, everyone was on tenterhooks. Scottish distilleries faced the same headwinds but had a far larger market share, and multiples of the sales Irish producers had. In many cases they also had decades or centuries of experience of the highs and lows of making whisky – most Irish distillers had only hit the market in the previous decade, and presumably investors not used to the cyclical nature of whiskey might not be happy to be told, things are bad right now but will pick up again in two years or so. So plugs start to get pulled.
I am constantly amazed that anyone, anywhere, ever, would invest in a distillery – massive outlay to get it up and running and five to ten years before you can start to make a few bob selling the stuff. It’s unsurprising that the vast majority of distilleries on the island of Ireland filled in this five-year gap by buying in stock from larger producers, sometimes passing it off under their own distillery brand, sometimes creating an adjacent brand which they were very discreet about revealing as sourced. I suspect those who used another distillery’s products will survive better than most – Waterford, after all, sourced nothing and had no vodka, or gin. A distillery cannot survive on provenance alone, it would seem.
Auction prices are already falling, Irish whiskey is not the hot topic it was five years ago, and a certain amount of excitement is gone. But that had to happen – with the big producers reducing supply, or others simply going under, balance will be restored. None of that is comforting to those who will lose their jobs or their investments in these businesses but a shakeout was almost inevitable. The belle époque had to end. Better it happens now than in another five years when there could be another ten or 15 distilleries operational and thus farther to fall back to earth. Our space shuttle has blown up, but it could be much worse.
