World Whiskey Day: Meet the Irish whiskey makers mastering the lost art of bonding

Unless you’ve had your head in a barrel you’ll know that there is an Irish whiskey renaissance well under way. A decade ago, there were just four distilleries producing Irish whiskey on the island. Today there are over 30 distilleries operating across all four provinces, with many more in the pipeline.

Intriguingly, however, the bricks and mortar distilleries don’t tell the full story. As one canny player in the Irish whiskey revival put it: “Owning a distillery is not a prerequisite for making a great whiskey.”

So said Lorcan Rossi, CEO of the Dublin Whiskey Distillery Company, which is resurrecting the once-iconic D.W.D. brand. Though named after an historic distillery, the company is in no hurry to build its own. As Rossi explains, “we feel it is wise to wait and consider the Irish distilling landscape as it evolves over the next few years before finalising our plans to build our own distillery…” For now, they have secured long-term access to aged Irish whiskey stocks and are pitching themselves as “a new independent Irish whiskey blender and bottler”.

Louise McGuane of J.J. Corry Irish Whiskey and Chapel Gate Irish Whiskey Company (pictured above) is going one step further. “I’m never going to have a distillery,” she claims proudly. Instead, Louise is on a mission to bring back the lost art of Irish whiskey bonding.

During the 19th-century “golden age” of Irish whiskey, distilleries – of which there were hundreds – would sell directly to whiskey bonders who would source, barrel age, blend, bottle and sell the whiskey under their own independent brands. The resulting regional variation, Louise argues, was lost when the industry consolidated under a few main brands.

Many bonders were small- scale grocers or publicans, like a certain JJ Corry who was born near the McGuane family farm in west Clare and went on to operate a whiskey bonders in nearby Kilrush from the 1890s. Inspired by JJ’s story and the rich heritage of this once- widespread business model, Louise abandoned her original plans – “to have a grain-to-glass operation with a distillery on the farm” – and established herself as a modern-day whiskey bonder.

In one sense, what D.W.D and Chapel Gate are doing is common practice today. Given the ageing requirements for Irish whiskey – at least three years and a day, legally – most new distilleries trade whiskey that they have acquired, blended and bottled long before they have any of their own to release. The difference lies in making a virtue of the practice and building your business model around it.