Why Irish whiskey distilling is not for the 'faint of heart'
June O'Connell of the Skellig Six18 Distillery which is aiming to build a global brand from the Skellig coast.
There is a massive opportunity in the global whiskey market, but it isn’t an industry for the faint of heart.
That’s according to Kerry woman June O’Connell, who has returned to her roots to develop a €10 million micro-distillery and visitor centre along the Ring of Kerry.
“This is a very expensive industry, a capital intensive industry. It's a twenty-year business plan,” she says.
O’Connell, who spent 25 years working as a lawyer with William Fry and for her own specialist practice, founded the company with her husband Patrick Cooney, head of Davy's private client division, and MBA Chartered Accountant Patrick Sugrue.
The founders, who have invested some €2 million of their own money into the project thus far, successfully raised €1.75 million under the Employment & Investment Incentive Scheme in 2019, and have done a further B round under EII in 2020, most of which has been ring-fenced as part of a €4m investment into the whiskey distillery plant project this year.
“The amount of investment in the mechanical engineering and electrical engineering side is eye-watering,” O’Connell says.
The most recent Drinks Ireland market report on spirits shows that spirits, particularly whiskey and gin, continue to grow in popularity with volume sales of gin rising 4.6% to 338,500 cases in 2019.
“Whiskey is a premium product by its nature, its definition. You have to put in a huge investment to make the factory and the plant, to install it and to run it.”
Irish Whiskey has special status as a protected Geographical Indication (GI) by the EU, meaning that any product bearing that label must adhere to strict guidelines governing its blending, production and marketing.
“Single pot still is a unique Irish style of whiskey that you cannot make anywhere else in the world. And it has to stay in a cask maturing on the island of Ireland for a minimum of three years.”
The decision to only sell what is produced at the distillery is a strategic decision Skellig Six18 has made and a departure from a practice that is commonly undertaken by new distilleries who blend and sell whiskeys from other distilleries before they are able to sell their own.
As such, Munster’s whiskey drinkers are unlikely to get a taste of Skellig Six18’s whiskey until at least 2024.
“We would hope that our first mature Skellig six18 whiskey would be available within five years, but if it's not ready, if it's not good enough, if the taste profile isn't right, we won’t put it on the market. We’ll keep it in the cask.”
The distillery, which is named after the six hundred and 18 steps to the top of Skellig Michael, will have the capacity for six casks per day on a single shift, with the founder’s initial plan to produce some 33,000 cases a year.
For now, customers can indulge in the distilleries aperitif gin, which O’Connell is quick to dispel as a source of easy cash-flow.
“[There is a narrative] that you just make gin, it's quicker and it's easy and that's what people do for cash. you don't.”
“The hardest part of the spirits industry is what I call the last three feet. It's the part where somebody puts their hand up on a shelf and takes your product. That's the hardest part."
The most recent Drinks Ireland market report on spirits shows that spirits, particularly whiskey and gin, continue to grow in popularity with volume sales of gin rising 4.6% to 338.500 cases in 2019. While vodka remains the most popular spirit in Ireland, whiskey and gin are catching up, with Irish whiskey accounting for almost a quarter of spirit sales in Ireland in 2019.
Despite the growth in whiskey sales in Ireland, O’Connell said they also have their eyes on the global market.
“Out of ten bottles of premium whiskey sold in the world, eight are scotch, one is Irish. In terms of the opportunity in the global market. It's massive.”
O’Connell, who was reared and educated in the Skellig region, is loyal to the place of her birth and is passionate about creating and sustaining jobs and livelihoods in the region, something she believes every consumer has the chance to contribute to when they choose their poison.
“The Irish gin distilleries, so many of them are based in rural Ireland, outside of the big urban areas and we know that for every job inside the distillery there's seven jobs indirectly in tourism."
"It's really valuable revenue to rural communities.”
The distillery currently employs ten people and O’Connell says the team are very ambitious about building a global brand from the Skellig coast.
While the pandemic did hamper plans somewhat for a busy 2020 season, the distillery, which is located in the former Wilson Socks manufacturing plant in Cahersiveen still welcomed over 1,000 visitors through its doors last year despite only being able to take six people on a tour at any one time.
As for summer 2021: “If Ireland is open, we’ll be open."
