This is the new face of Irish whiskey - and it’s a woman

It’s a drink associated with the mature connoisseur, the hardened drinker and latterly the hipster, all of them men. Not anymore says Bill Linnane as the home of Irish whiskey has hired a woman as chief distiller at its new microbrewery

The summer of 1975 wasn’t a particularly remarkable one. The somnambulist prog of 10CC’s I’m Not In Love topped the Irish charts, there were lightning storms across the country and in the Munster Final between Cork and Kerry, sparks flew between Páidí O Sé and Dinny Allen.

And in an east Cork town, one of the longest surviving distilleries in Ireland stopped producing whiskey. The stills fell silent in Midleton on a Friday afternoon, after 150 years of distilling on the site, and the (largely male) workforce trudged through the gates for the last time.