Locke's Distillery
Locke's Distillery (also: Kilbeggan Distillery ) is a whiskey distillery in Ireland . The company is headquartered in Kilbeggan , County Westmeath . Established in 1757, Locke's Distillery is considered the oldest continuously licensed distillery in the world. However, the distillery was closed from 1957 to 2007. The Kilbeggan Irish Whiskey brand and the old distillery building are part of the Cooley Distillery , founded in 1987 , the only independent whiskey distillery Irish owned.
Cooley Distillery produced Locke's Irish Whiskey , a superior blend named after James and John Locke, the previous owners of Kilbeggan.
history
Founded until 1957
The distillery was founded in 1757 by the McManus family. In 1794, the Codd family acquired a stake in the Kilbeggan distillery. In the first few years it doubled the capacity of the distillery. However, the number of legally registered Irish distilleries has been dramatically reduced by increased taxes and government control. The remaining sites increased their production as the demand for middle class whiskey continued . After the tax laws were relaxed in 1820, the owners of the Kilbeggan distillery were able to invest in some expansion. This coincided with the opening of a side canal of the Grand Canal to the city of Kilbeggan, which ensured an ideal supply and distribution of water. However, the resurgence of the Irish whiskey industry proved short-lived. The total abstinence movement of Father Theobald Mathew began in 1838, and in a few years a great number of the population had joined it. Irish whiskey's boom ended in the early 1840s and the Kilbeggan distillery was in dire financial straits.
The Locke family came to Kilbeggan in the 1840s. John Locke had experience in the towns of Tullamore and Monasterevin and in 1843 bought the Kilbeggan distillery from the Codds family. By 1870 the distillery was producing more than ever and a significant expansion of the distillery began. At the same time there was a significant increase in the export of Irish whiskey to the English market. Between 1860 and 1900, Irish whiskey exports to England rose from 1 million gallons to over 8 million gallons a year. During this time there were significant changes in whiskey distillation technology in Ireland and increasingly also in Scotland with the introduction of the patent or coffey distillation device . With this, a distillery could produce far more whiskey than with the conventional pot still process . However, there was no place in Kilbeggan for the new technology, so the Lockes' distillery kept its original technique. The traditional pot still distillation that had been handed down from generation to generation was maintained. However, this traditional view was not profitable, as the new cheap whiskey was far better sold by the competition. From 1890 to 1910, sales fell rapidly. In 1910, the Kilbeggan distillery's production was at the same level as at the end of 1860. In order to increase sales, the Lockes began looking for new sales sources abroad. They entered into a business relationship with a broker in New York and expanded their business to England .
Despite economic troubles, Irish whiskey was the leading high-alcohol drink in Britain by 1900 . Large quantities were exported to the West Indies and the US market. It is believed that from 1919 to 1933, 75% of the whiskey consumed in the US was Irish whiskey. It took three major setbacks to break the success of the Irish whiskey industry: the Irish War of Independence , US Prohibition, and the introduction of Scotch Blended Whiskey . The Irish War of Independence began in 1916 and lasted until independence in 1921. Shortly after independence, a trade war developed with England in which Irish whiskey's access to the lucrative markets in Great Britain and its empire was blocked. At the same time, prohibition was introduced in the US in 1920. This experiment lasted until 1933, a time when the Irish whiskey industry was mortally wounded. When Prohibition was lifted, the damaged Irish whiskey industry was unable to meet the demand of the resurgent US market. The Scottish whiskey industry was able to easily meet the increasing demand with their new blended whiskey with the simpler production process . The Locke family fought against such a predicament. At the time, John Locke's daughters Florence Eccles and Mary Hope Johnston were the directors and major shareholders . Despite their best efforts, the distillery had to close in 1954 and the Kilbeggan distillery finally closed in 1957.
After the closure
The downfall of the Kilbeggan distillery reflected the general decimation of the Irish whiskey industry. By 1966 the number of operating distilleries in Ireland had dropped to four. When the Jameson, Powers and Cork distilleries merged to form Irish Distillers , there were only two distilleries left. In the early 1970s, Bushmills joined the company, so there was only one distillery left. Such a monopoly did little to develop Irish whiskey. The creation of Cooley Distillery in 1987 brought much-needed competition back to the market. Cooley Distillery was the brainchild of John Teeling and the first new whiskey distillery in Ireland in over 100 years. The first step was to acquire a manufacturing facility on the Cooley Peninsula . That move was followed by the acquisition of some of the most iconic brands in old Irish whiskey history. Kilbeggan distillery and its brands were bought in 1988 with the vision of using the old halls to mature whiskey and restore the distillery and its brands to their former glory. Since the 1970s, Kilbeggan distillery had been run by a handful of people who had kept both local distillery licenses and most of the old distillery equipment. After the Irish Distillers were sold to the French company Pernod Ricard and the subsequent sale of Bushmills to the English company Diageo , the Cooley whiskey distillery is the only one remaining in Irish ownership.
Cooley uses the halls at the Kilbeggan distillery to age whiskey. While Kilbeggan Distillery, last used by the Locke family, remained and can be seen as Locke's Distillery Museum on-site, there was another major step forward for Kilbeggan Distillery in 2007. Steps were taken to mark the 250th anniversary To resume distillation. An old pot still , which was last used in the 19th century, was carefully restored and fired on March 19th, 2007, exactly 54 years after the day on which the distillation stopped. The distillery now produces up to 250,000 bottles of whiskey per year, which mature in the adjacent granite halls. Thus, this pot still is the oldest still working in Ireland and reviving a traditional style of distillation in Ireland.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gilbert Delos: Les Whiskeys du Monde. Translation from French: Karin-Jutta Hofmann: Whiskey from all over the world. Karl Müller, Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-86070-442-7 , p. 122 f.
Coordinates: 53 ° 22 '9.3 " N , 7 ° 30' 8.5" W.