Dublin business couple Gareth and Michelle McAllister were disappointed that Irish whiskey was never on the menu during the nights they spent attending corporate events in Hong Kong, leaving them “sick and tired” of offers of “Irish Scotch”.
Mr McAllister had a passion for collecting Irish whiskeys, and he would always stock up at the duty-free in Dublin Airport on trips home, but the irritation at the singular absence of the spirit at the gatherings they attended seeded an idea.
According to research by Drinks Ireland, Irish whiskey is the world’s fastest-growing spirit, with sales increasing by 140 per cent in the decade to 2020. Key to marketing Irish spirits on the Asian continent is its birth and production on home soil, Mr McAllister said.
Spurred by the idea, the pair decided to move from densely-populated Hong Kong to open a whiskey and gin distillery in a disused and dilapidated mill in the tiny village of Ahascragh in East Galway, where some 200 people live.
The plan to create their Irish whiskey brand had been brewing for a while, but the global Covid-19 pandemic hastened their timeline. Mr McAllister had travelled to Ireland from Hong Kong in March 2020 for meetings, but then found himself stuck in Ireland as travel bans were enforced.
With the opportunity to spend time in the West of Ireland, Mr McAllister realised they needed to open their craft distillery as soon as possible, and Ms McAllister and their four children joined him in the Republic at the close of the school year.
‘Lockdown project’
“It was an earlier start than we had intended, but it became a good lockdown project,” she said.
Ms McAllister had come across the 19th-century mill in Ahascragh when searching properties online from their Hong Kong home. Seeing the building in the flesh “ just won our hearts”, she said. “We fell in love with this tiny wee village.”
On Thursday Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister of State and Galway TD Anne Rabbite will jointly lay the stone to mark the start of the restoration project. The cafe and visitor centre will showcase the mill’s historical function. Irish whiskey must age in casks for at least three years, but in the meantime McAllister Distillery will sell their sourced Xin Gin and Clan Colla whiskey.
Mr McAllister said that bringing the historical structure back to life has become a “very important part of our journey”.
He added: “The country is littered with old buildings like this... We could have put a shed up in a field, but it is great to be able to bring light back to the old mill and to celebrate its life, because this is part of Irish heritage.”
