A possibly once-off collection of news stories about booze from this last month, largely based on my own terrible Twitter feed.
Killarney Brewing and Distilling are on another round of fundraising, focussing on the US and aiming to bring in €7 million. The 62k square foot brewery, distillery, event centre and restaurant which lies just outside Fossa on the outskirts of Killarney is estimated to have cost €20 million. If you are wondering where the money went, it is worth going down for a look, and a bite to eat. It’s an impressive place, and the food is great – my family ate there and all loved it.
They also started exporting beer to the Nordics, Eastern Europe, and are heading for Italy, France and the UK next. Key personnel hired recently included head distiller Kerr Petrie. Having trained as an engineer at biotech giants Ipsen and Novartis, he moved into drinks with Diageo in 2012, working in Speyside, covering 28 malt distilleries across the region. After that he went to the US Virgin Islands at the Captain Morgan Distillery, before he came back to Ireland in 2018, joining Irish Distillers in Midleton as production supervisor, and then moving to Killarney as master distiller. The head brewer in Killarney is Mike Bank, formerly of Long Trail Brewing in Vermont, Ithaca Beer Company in New York, and Oyster Bay Brewing in Long Island.
After what seemed like a lot of delays, distilling finally started last September and this round of fundraising is aimed at driving whiskey, gin, and beer sales through increased marketing and distribution internationally. They can produce up to 250,000 cases pa or one million LPA, and claim they have the potential to double output with a modest investment in the future. They also have both pot and column stills, while their 500 litre Bavarian copper gin still from Mueller can produce 80,000 cases pa.
If you are feeling flaithiúlach with the money you can read the prospectus here.
You could run endless stories about how much a distillery loses in the first 15 years of their life. The places are money pits, but when a story does pop up it always makes the news because a lot of people don’t realise that whiskey is a long-term thing. Nevertheless, it’s always interesting when accounts are published; at the end of March, the Irish Times had a piece about Slane Distillery’s finances and how they saw losses rise to €25.7m: The most recent accounts show that it had made a loss of €3.2 million in the year to the end of April 2023, up from the previous year’s trading loss of €2.7 million. During that year the value of the company’s whiskey stocks rose from €23.5 million to €29.2 million, made up of “finished goods and goods for resale”, according to the accounts.
Not long after this piece, Just Drinks had a long interview with Alex Conyngham, who started the brand with his father Lord Henry Mountcharles before they sold it to Brown Forman in 2015. The distillery, which is adjacent to the family castle, started distilling in 2018, but Alex told JD their own stock would only be released in the next five years. In the meantime they are using their sourced whiskey to drive their triple cask blend, which is at around 50,000 cases globally. It is, as one rock behemoth opined, a long way to the top if you want to rock n’ roll.
Shamrocks for our real friends, real shocks for readers of the Irish Mirror in early April when it was revealed that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar bought bottles of whiskey for the leaders of each of our EU partners, as well as the Presidents of the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament: The presentation of twenty-nine bottles of Bushmills 10-Year-Old Single Malt whiskey last December cost €668.45 while the bill for the same number of porter cakes was €130.21. Ever eager to police Irishness, some asked why he chose Bushmills rather than a Republic Of Ireland distillery, and while I think you could write a dissertation on why he chose an iconic Northern Irish distillery as the source for his gifts at a time when the prospect of a united Ireland looms large in the discourse, chances are he chose it because it is about the cheapest age-statement Irish whiskey you can buy. Redbreast 12 is about twice the price, and I’m not sure the ordinary person – or average diplomat – knows the difference between a 12 year old single pot still and a ten year old single malt, so saving hundreds of euro makes perfect sense. And besides, it can’t hurt to acknowledge that one of the island’s great distilleries just happens to lie on the other side of the border.
On the topic of distilleries being money pits – the Dublin Liberties Distillery is one that, because of its Dublin location, tends to receive a lot of scrutiny from our national press. Unfortunately many of the headlines tend to be similar:
Dublin Liberties Whiskey reports losses of over €3.5m in 2023
Dampened spirits– Dublin Liberties Whiskey records big rise in losses to March 2022
Losses continue to mount at Dublin Liberties Distillery
The Business Post piece goes into a lot of detail, but again, whiskey is a mug’s game when it comes to money. It does include this absolute gem though: In 2021, Alex Pollard, chief financial officer at Quintessential, told the Business Post that the firm was playing the “long game” with its Irish investments, and that the Dublin Liberties Distillery arm of the company was not designed to be majorly profitable.
“It’s there to be as efficient as possible as a distillery, and produce liquid as cheaply as possible,” he said at the time.
A refreshing frankness.
Early April also saw a piece in the Sunday Times suggesting that Powerscourt Distillery might be up for sale: The Sunday Times understands that the company hired Key Capital, a Dublin-based adviser, to handle a potential sale in recent months. The distillery, which is co-owned by the Slazenger family, owners of the Powerscourt Estate in Co Wicklow, last year secured a €25 million asset-backed financing facility.
The departure of both investor and MD Alex Peirce (whose family were behind both Arran and Lagg distilleries in Scotland) and then legendary master distiller Noel Sweeney both in the last couple of years is the kind of thing that adds weight to any rumours of the distillery being for sale. But everywhere is for sale if the price is right.
Drinks International gave a rundown on Teeling Distillery in Dublin, which Bacardi took majority control of in December, six years after the spirits group first invested in the brand: While the brand will now be within the Bacardi group’s portfolio, Stephen and brother Jack will maintain ownership of a portion of the company and continue to run the day-to-day operations.
Teeling now have their own Dublin-distilled whiskey on the market but they also still have a very large amount of sourced stock which wasn’t made in Dublin and which they sell under their own distillery label, which is normal in Irish whiskey, apparently.
Back up North of the border and Hinch are the ones getting a run through of the accounts. The distillery officially opened in 2021 following a £15m investment. The Co Down distillery was founded by serial entrepreneur Terry Cross and recorded an operating loss of £2 million last year, according to accounts. It brought the total losses for the three years ending June 2023 to £4.2m. Like I said, money pits.
Hinch also use a lot of sourced stock, such as the 15 year old they released in conjunction with James Nesbitt of Cold Feet/Hobbit fame.
Speaking of celebrity backers: The Muff Liquor Company bagged a few high-profile ones in the last while, with Ed Sheeran, Jimmy Carr, Ronan Keating, and Russell Crowe investing in the firm. The brand name is, depending on who you ask, a fun and cheeky bit of wordplay enabled by the fact there is a village in Donegal named Muff, or play on a homophobic, misogynistic term that really would have been better off consigned to the dustbins of history. The fact the firm is fronted by a woman has probably helped the name avoid too much scrutiny but a big bunch of lads investing means we now have videos like this one, where Ed and Rusell celebrate MLC landing a distribution deal in the USA: Sound up if you like dying inside:
You have to have a sense of humour though and so it was with a sensible chuckle I noted that the Muff Liquor Company isn’t even headquartered in the titular village, but rather some 20 kilometres up the coast in Moville. There are plans for a brand home and distillery in Muff so I look forward to many wonderful jokes about his incredibly funny name going forward. And if any blokes out there want to balance the scales with a liquor company just for the lads, there is a townland in Mayo that has the perfect name.
Lord Of The Drams Michael Flatley is bringing out his own whiskey. It was only a matter of time, as he is quite the fan (his house in Fermoy has a dedicated whiskey room).
It’s a five year old blend with Noel Sweeney listed as master blender. The label has some tasteful blarney (but then what Irish whiskey doesn’t?):
This exquisite blend is a tribute to the undaunted dreamers who shape the world. Savour the spirit of ambition and the warmth of achieving the extraordinary. May each sip inspire your path to greatness.
Naturally, impressionist Mario Rosenstock gave it a run-through.
Other notable labels appearing on the TTB pages include the usual sublime and ridiculous selection, but most notable in the last few weeks was this one:
With a flock of releases across the last four years, this one seems like it might be worth getting excited about. Or it would, if premiumisation hadn’t pushed most of the Redbreast range out of the price range of normal whiskey drinkers who enjoy fine spirits but don’t want to have to sell a kidney to pay for them. After the labels were posted on Twitter, a hive mind came to the conclusion that this release will most likely cost around €160-€220, as there is a gap in the range around that price:
Redbreast 12 continues to hover at the €60-€70 region but it is probably a matter of time until it gets jacked as well (as ex-IDL guru Brendan Buckley stated). If you see it sub €60 online, it might be an idea to grab a couple.
On the topic of Midleton’s premium offerings, the Waterford-based company that bottles IDL’s upper-end releases sought court protection as it tried to save 115 jobs: Admiralford Limited, whose biggest customer is Irish Distillers, was granted an order appointing an interim examiner to temporarily run the company’s affairs in a bid to save it from collapse and the loss of 115 full- and part-time jobs in and around Waterford.
The court was told that the plant specialised in premium whiskies, exclusively bottling many of Ireland’s most famous brands such as Midleton Very Rare, Redbreast, Paddy, Cork Dry Gin, Writers Tears, as well as Irishman and Waterford among others. Rising costs and war in Ukraine were blamed for the company’s struggles.
In court also – or narrowly avoiding court – were West Cork Distillers, who had a fish kill case against them withdrawn by Inland Fisheries Ireland, which blamed internal issues for the withdrawal: In 2022, West Cork Distillers had pleaded guilty to three offences relating to a discharge of liquids into the River Ilen in Skibbereen on July 21, 2021, which its was alleged had led to the deaths of approximately 2,000 fish including salmon and sea trout, though they denied that the discharge was responsible for the deaths of the fish. Judge James McNulty had ordered the company to “make amends” by donating €1,000 each to the 26 tidy towns group across West Cork… Stephen O’Donoghue, defending, told the court that his client had donated 26 cheques to the value of €26,000 as suggested by the court which he noted was a significantly higher sum than the maximum penalty of €15,000 which could have been imposed. He asked that legal costs of €5,500 paid by his client directly to Inland Fisheries Ireland would be reimbursed as there was no longer any basis for them to pay the fees as the prosecution had been withdrawn.
Judge James McNulty said that West Cork Distillers had dealt with the matter in “a noble and gracious manner” and he ordered the legal fees to be repaid to which Mr Coakley agreed.
Around the country other distilleries were in expansion mode – the Shed Distillery in Leitrim invested €10m to double whiskey-making capacity, and Lough Measc in Mayo were seeking investment to double their production. And despite all my comments about distilleries being money pits, there are still those who want to get involved – the latest place to greenlight a distillery is Boyle in Roscommon, so at least the town’s most famous son has a local brand to support and can stop talking to chirpy Cork birds.
The plans are impressive – you can see them here.
Per the Indo: The new distillery will have a floor area of 1,357 square metres incorporating the installation of plant, together with minor alterations/works to existing building, together with all ancillary site works and services.
Roscommon County Council approved the development, subject to 18 conditions.
One of conditions states that the developer will engage the services of a suitably qualified Conservation Architect or other suitably qualified professional with proven conservation skills for the detailed design and specification of the works to the historic structure, in particular the reinstatement and repair of the existing building/elements
You can nose around the distillery website here and the webpage for the warehouse complex they already have in operation here. More on the family behind the plans here.
The official figure for whiskey distilleries here still floats between 45 and 50 – but with some high profile operations never getting beyond the planning stages, or smaller ones going silent, I would guess that it is unlikely we will go past 50, or at least we won’t in the next five years – Scotland has 145 (and counting) so we haveplenty time to catch up. Slow and steady etc etc.
And finally, a distillery opened in a remarkable building:
Located in the historic A-wing of Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, McConnell’s Distillery and Visitor Experience is now open. Perhaps most remarkable is that a former inmate – now NI minster – performed the official opening:
A new whisky distillery in a former Belfast prison which once housed paramilitary prisoners “epitomises the journey of transformation”, a Stormont minister has said. Economy Minister Conor Murphy, who was once held in the Crumlin Road Gaol accused of Provisional IRA membership, also described himself as a living embodiment of the process. The jail housed scores of political prisoners up to its closure in 1996, before reopening its imposing Victorian doors as a tourist attraction in 2012.
Asked whether there was any alcohol available in the prison in the 1980s, Mr Murphy added: “Not made to the standard that McConnell’s make it… a few people tried their hands at distilling then, thankfully I didn’t have to experience any of it.”
Better days indeed.