The celebrations are continuing at Ireland's oldest pot distillery, Locke's in Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath, which has won an AIB Better Ireland Award worth £25,000.
What has been done at the distillery museum over the past decade is a lesson for all communities, rural and urban, about how a local project should be run.
In 1987 a committee was set up to examine what the community could do with its most visible asset, a run-down factory which had ceased production in 1957. The distillery, which the locals claim is older than Bushmills in Co Antrim, has had a chequered career since it first produced whiskey in 1757.
In 1843 it was acquired by the Locke family and, by 1887, it was distilling 160,000 proof gallons annually and employing more than 70 people. It was powered by the mill wheel - a familiar sight to motorists on their way to Galway - and later by a massive steam engine. The whiskey was sold in ceramic "pigs" or casks as pure or old pot still, and two of its best-known devotees were Winston Churchill and Myles na Gopaleen.
In the 1920s two sons of the founder, old John Locke, died at a very important stage in the history of whiskey-making, when prohibition in the United States rocked the industry to its foundations. Coupled with that, and punitive duty on distilling, came the Anglo-Irish trade war, which led to the distillery closing down for many years.
It reopened before the second World War when one of the employees, the former chief distiller, ran an illicit distilling operation at night. He arranged the distillation of the whiskey, which he mixed with dyes and matured spirits, and transported it to Galway, from where it was distributed to sales outlets all over the west.
The running of the distillery became the focus of a public inquiry after the war and the surviving Locke sisters sold their shares in the business. What they failed to realise was that while they had sold their shares in a very run-down premises, it did have large stocks of mature whiskey. It turned out that the men who tried to buy it had no money.
Government taxation finally closed the distillery in 1958 and, for the next 25 years, the site was used for a variety of endeavours including a piggery and a storage yard for machinery.
The local committee leased the plant from Cooley Distillery in Co Louth, which had acquired the assets at Kilbeggan, and set about restoring it as a museum with mill wheel, warehouses, stores and steam engine. This was done with the help of FAS. More assistance was provided by the local LEADER group, which is involved in rural development, and by Westmeath Co Council.
Last year 32,000 people visited the museum with its working machinery, exhibition area and restaurant, and they have a chance to taste three types of whiskey, including a Locke's blend. Twenty-one people are employed at the museum, including guides, restaurant staff and maintenance and building workers, according to the acting tourist manager, Ms Janet Wallace.
She says the prize money will be spent on further restoration work at the museum, which attracts many visitors from overseas, especially continental Europe. Work has already started on a new exhibition centre and plans have been drawn up to refurbish the Pantry restaurant and the reception area.