The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday
By Richard Thomas
The Irishman Cask Strength
(Credit: Walsh Whiskey)
Last autumn it was announced that Walsh Whiskey, bottlers of Writer’s Tears and The Irishman, received financing from Illva Saronno, owner of Disaronno, to advance their plans to build a €25 million distillery in County Carlow. Now Walsh has cleared the second step in making that distillery a reality, receiving planning permission from the Irish authorities.
Work is now scheduled to begin on the new distillery in September. Construction should be completed by October 2015, and regular distillation started the following year. When finished, the new facility and its expanded warehouse capacity will allow Walsh Whiskey to increase its stock and ship up to 400,000 cases per year. The construction project will create 40 jobs, while the new distillery will create 55 full- and part-time jobs.
County Carlow already had one distillery, albeit briefly, when animal feed giant Alltech installed some Vendome equipment into the Carlow Brewing Company, creating a second “brewstillery” mirroring the one they have in Lexington, Kentucky. The company then changed their mind about where their distillery should be, and are now in the midst of moving it to a defunct church in Dublin. This leaves Walsh as the sole whiskey-maker in County Carlow.
