Oliver Moore: Family’s role in rise of organic whiskey

Lisa Ryan grew up on a tillage farm in Carlow. Now, she’s head brewer in the Waterford Distillery, having moved on from Diageo, where she spent 12 years.

As a child, she did “all the glamorous jobs like picking stones at home on the farm”.

That farm is now one of 46 supplying malting barley to the distillery. Her father, David Power, was the first to deliver his malting barley crop this year. On September 1, Waterford Distillery began the production process for their organic whiskey.