Tourism, tasting and Irish history: Whiskey a go-go in Killarney

Whiskey tourism is big business – and one hotel group in Kerry is embracing the spirit. Bill Linnane pays a visit

Maurice O'Connell with his Lakeview Whiskey - distilled with barley from his family farm in Fossa, Killarney, Co Kerry

Be it Scotland’s malts, or Kentucky bourbon, there are many who will travel to visit the homeland of their favourite brown spirit. Here in Ireland, we have a much-vaunted Irish whiskey renaissance; with that comes great opportunities for tourism, and one Kerry hotel group is embracing this spirit with a range of exclusive experiences.

The O’Donoghue Ring Collection includes the Killarney Plaza Hotel & Spa, the Killarney Avenue Hotel, the Killarney Towers Hotel, and the River Island Hotel along with Park Place Apartments, while their restaurants and bars include The Tan Yard, Café Du Parc and O’Donoghue Public House, the latter being the venue for the start of their exclusive whiskey experience.

The pub was completely refurbished in the last couple of years and is styled as modern traditional, with cosy snugs ideal for our tutored whiskey tasting. After a brief history of Irish whiskey, we were guided through samples of Bushmills 10-year-old single malt, Redbreast 12-year-old, Teeling Single Grain, and Connemara 12-year-old peated single malt, which covers the main styles of whiskey made by the big three distilleries: Cooley, Midleton, and Bushmills. After an introduction to the classics, it was time to learn more about one of the newcomers to Irish whiskey, albeit a newcomer whose family has links to the spirits trade going back centuries.

Everyone who has been through the Irish education system knows of Daniel O’Connell. The Liberator, as O’Connell is known, was a thorn in the side of the British establishment as he fought for Catholic emancipation in the 1800s. The O’Connell family had a long history of importing brandy and wines from the continent - often illegally.

The Liberator himself was no prude when it came to drinks - he counted the Powers family of John’s Lane Distillery among his closest friends, and also funded a brewery that his son operated, which produced O’Connell’s Ale.

Maurice and Francesca O'Connell pictured outside Lakeview House in Fossa, Killarney, Co Kerry.

Maurice O’Connell is a great great great grandnephew of Daniel O’Connell, and Lakeview House in Fossa just outside Killarney has been the family home for 150 years.

It’s hard not to be awed by the location as we arrived in our chauffeur-driven car, with unspoiled views of Lough Leane and the mountains behind it. O’Connell then gives us a whistle-stop tour of several centuries of his family lineage in the drawing room - which his wife Francesca, a former investment banker - has dubbed the chamber of horrors. Huge portraits hang on the walls, all ageing oils and gilded frames, blank-faced velvet-clad members of the dearly departed stare down on us lowly mortals.

The story of Daniel O’Connell is just one strand to the remarkable family history, and Maurice rattles through tales of defiance, derring-do, and large-scale illegal importation of spirits.

Daniel O’Connell may have been known as the Wayward O’Connell, but the family still managed to land themselves a baronetship, meaning Maurice O’Connell’s full title is Sir Maurice James Donagh MacCarthy Patrick O’Connell, 7th Baronet, hereditary Lord of the Manor of Ballycarbery Castle. It’s a weighty title but one he wears lightly - he is an aristocrat with a small a, and the triumph of this whiskey experience is that he is witty, engaging company.

It also helps that he also has a warehouse full of excellent whiskeys out the back. The idea for a whiskey business came not just from his family’s links with the spirits trade, but from when Maurice purchased a pub mirror advertising O’Connell and O’Flynn Galway Bay Irish Distillery. There was no such distillery - the brand was cooked up by a firm that created pub mirrors for Irish bars. But a seed was planted and in 2015 he started to focus on building a whiskey business. Initially, they had plans for a distillery - they had the barley grown on their farm, and the story, but the estate was not big enough to create a single-estate whiskey distillery. There would need to be more to the business.

There are two strands to Wayward Irish Spirits thus far - 300-year-old stone buildings to the rear of Lakeview have been converted into whiskey warehouses with space for blending and bottling. This is where The Liberator brand releases are born. Alongside this, Lakeview Estate’s own barley - grown in what they call the Hilly Field next to the house, a slight misnomer as it is only hilly relative to the fields to the rear which were used as an airstrip in the 1930s - has been harvested and distilled at John Teeling’s Great Northern Distillery. It was then casked and returned to Lakeview to mature. These releases will be specifically marketed as Lakeview whiskeys.

Rows of the Liberator Storehouse Special. one of O'Connell's whiskeys

O’Connell is also buying in casks of new-make pot still and malt whiskey from a number of distilleries around Ireland.

After a tour of the warehouses, it was time to settle into O’Connell’s study for a sampling. O’Connell produced bottle after bottle of his various releases, and rounded it out with some experimental spirits in the form of a cask-aged gin and a vodka finished in casks that previously held peated whiskey.

The hours slipped by as we talked whiskey and he guided us through each offering. After that it was back to O’Donoghues for a hearty meal and to the luxurious surrounds of the Plaza Hotel for a good night’s sleep.

Killarney is a tourism hotspot and these whiskey experiences may not draw the bus tours, but they are not designed to.

These are intimate, personal experiences that will appeal to the Irish American market - with two distilleries opening in Fossa shortly, and one already operational in Scart, there is great potential to expand whiskey tourism in the region.

But what makes the O’Donoghue Ring events special is access - it is Maurice O’Connell opening his home alongside the many, many bottles of his excellent whiskeys which makes these experiences unique. They may not be for everyone - and are most definitely not for every pocket - but it’s not every day you get to sit in a historic home drinking whiskey with an Irish baronet for the afternoon.

• The Liberator Whiskey Experience is available select dates all throughout the year from €250 per person sharing. Bookings are available for 2 to 6 people. Pre-booking is essential. For more information, contact [e-mail] or call [phone].