Spotlight On The Irish Whiskey Industry
As our first blog post for Sláinte we thought a timely update of the Irish Whiskey Industry may be appropriate.
If you are reading this then you are probably already aware that Irish whiskey has seen a massive surge in popularity across the world in recent years. This is great news but for many of us, it also seems to have been a very long time coming! A good barometer of how the whiskey industry is fairing is to look at the small producers. The Kilbeggan Distilling Company is a great example of how the industry has turned itself round. Formerly known as Cooley distillery, this company was nearly taken over by IDL in its' infancy and also struggled for over a decade to scrape together a yearly profit. Despite this they carried on with innovative releases and created some very interesting whiskey brands. Not long after reporting one of their best years of trading they were taken over by Jim Beam in early 2012. Jim Beam have since been bought by Suntory, making the company the first Irish distillery to be in Japanese hands.
The knock on effect from the Cooley/Kilbeggan takeover was that a lot of smaller whiskey bottlers were no longer able to source their whiskey from them. Jim Beam/Suntory have great plans to increase sales of Kilbeggan whiskey in the USA and are not so keen on selling their whiskeys to third parties.
This left a lot of whiskey bottlers without a reliable supplier and we have already seen a few brands disappear from our shelves over the last few years.
The ultimate effect of all this has fortunately been very positive. Many of these companies have gone on to develop their own distilling operations, some with heavy investment from overseas.
At time of writing, there are currently 9 operational whiskey distilleries in Ireland which is 5 more than this time two years ago! Additionally, there are at least another 10 distilleries that are either commencing distilling before the end of the year, or in the stages of finalising plans or building work.
So, with luck when I look back on this post in three years’ time we will have a number of new whiskeys in stock. However there is no doubt that some of these promising new ventures will either fail to materialise or falter once the hard financial pressures of the drinks industry appear. Of course whiskey is a unique product that can only be released after a minimum of three years in oak barrels. This presents some real challenges and most distillers will also experiment in making gin or vodka before their whiskey matures. Dingle Distillery are a good example of a new company that have already successfully done this. Others such as the Teeling Whiskey Company have managed to source some supplies of good mature whiskey which they will carry on using until their own spirit matures.
Whatever the future holds for Irish whiskey, it is sure to be an interesting journey.
Slainte.
