West Cork Distillers Distilling

THE PICTURESQUE village of Union Hall in west Cork, best known for its fishing industry, has a new string to its bow – distilling. The village is home to West Cork Distillers, the fledgling company behind three new Irish spirit products: Drombeg, Lough Hyne and Kennedy.

The company was set up in 2007 by lifetime friends Dr John O’Connell and Dennis and Gerard McCarthy. The trio spent four years developing their products while still doing their day jobs.

The McCarthys are fishermen while O’Connell is a food scientist with a background in industry with companies such as Unilever and Kerry group. The company employs seven people and makes its products in-house using locally sourced spring water.

“Most brown spirits on the market, such as brandy and rum, have a strength of 40 per cent proof or above, while whiskey- based liqueurs are 18-25 per cent proof but are highly sweetened and have other ingredients such as fruit or herbs added,” O’Connell says. “We saw a niche for a pure dark spirit that was lower in alcohol and developed Drombeg, which is 22 per cent.

“We have also developed our own proprietary maturation process, which gives our products their distinctive taste and quality.

“Standard wood maturation of alcoholic beverages involves just placing the product and allowing it to mature by static infusion. Our process entails a fluidised hydrostatic infusion process which allows for more control of the maturation process . . . We also use bourbon oak casks, sherry oak casks and virgin Irish oak, which makes us unique.”

The project has cost €400,000 to date. Most of the funding has come from the promoters, with support from the West Cork Enterprise Board and a bank loan.

At home, Drombeg has been listed by Musgraves (SuperValu and Centra stores) and by duty- free shops in Dublin, Cork and Shannon. O’Connell sees the export market as the real key to growth. The company recently won several awards at a prestigious international spirits competition held in New York.

“Thanks mainly to the international efforts of Pernod Ricard [which owns Irish Distillers], Irish whiskey is one of the few spirits experiencing real world growth,” O’Connell says.

“It is growing globally at about 15 per cent per annum but in some markets, such as the US, Russia and South Africa, at 25 per cent. Irish whiskey has about 2 per cent of the global whiskey market and if we could get a little piece of that we would be very happy.”