THE old water-mill at Kilbeggan Distillery was undergoing maintenance when I visited the place recently. For the same reason, the mill-race was dry. But I was assured that before the end of the summer, both would be back in working order and the wheel would be turning again on yet another chapter in the life of Ireland’s oldest licensed whiskey manufacturer.
The rise and fall and rise again of Locke’s – as the business was known for most of its history – mirrors the fortunes of Irish distilling in general. Once, up until the late 19th century at least, whiskey with an E in it was the unchallenged world leader; Scotch (then as now spelt “whisky”) the poor relation. Gradually, however, by a series of misfortunes and misjudgments, that dominant position was squandered.
Among other things, the canny Scots identified an emerging market for lighter, blended whiskies, which the purist Irish distillers at first disdained. Not only that, but an Irish invention – Aeneas Coffey’s 1831 patent still, long ignored in his own country – facilitated the Scotch success. Thus Irish whiskey’s decline had set in even before independence. But after that, it became precipitous.
Dev’s economic war with Britain was a disaster, and neutrality didn’t help much either. All those US troops stationed in the UK were a whisky marketer’s dream, bringing their newly acquired taste for Scotch home with them after the war. Yet the 20th century’s biggest calamity for Ireland’s distillers, probably, was a political event in Washington.
With the passing of the Volstead Act in 1919, the Irish stranglehold in the US market was suddenly turned against them. Prohibition failed to stop America drinking. In the process of failing, however, it all-but killed the whiskey industry on this island.
Even after its repeal in 1931, the damage didn’t end. Gangsters had filled the US vacuum with locally produced low-grade hooch, some under Locke’s name. So post-prohibition, the bad reputation lingered. The 1929 St Valentine’s day massacre, when an Irish gang ended up on the wrong side of a power struggle in the Chicago crime world, could have been a metaphor for what had happened by then to Irish whiskey’s former greatness.
THE KILBEGGAN distillery survived these and other setbacks, but not in good order. By the late 1940s, after nearly two centuries of distilling along the banks of the river Brosna, the end was looming. There was just time for one last tragicomic episode, which had a sting in the tail (fully deserved, whiskey distillers might think) for De Valera’s government.
Among its assets then, the distillery had 60,000 gallons of mature whiskey: very valuable, given the continuing post-war shortage in Britain. So when, in 1947, the owners decided to sell the business as a going concern, they attracted an offer of £305,000 from a Swiss-based syndicate called Trans-World Trust.
In fact, it was far from trustworthy. The syndicate was a bunch of gangsters, in effect, whose only interest was the existing reservoir of stock, which they planned to sell on the British black market for a quick and large profit.
The plot unravelled only when they failed to pay the agreed deposit on time. As investigators circled, it emerged that one of the front-men was a wanted criminal in the UK, travelling under a false ID and passport. Deported to England, he jumped off the ferry and was for a while presumed drowned, until it emerged that he had been picked up by accomplices, thereby eluding justice.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland, a young Fine Gael TD called Oliver J Flanagan started asking questions in the Dáil about the scam and Fianna Fáil’s part in it, with salacious details including alleged gifts of gold watches to helpful politicians.
A subsequent tribunal of inquiry found that Flanagan had over-egged the allegations, somewhat. Even so, a bad smell lingered. And the Locke’s scandal helped usher De Valera out of power after 16 years, to be replaced by the first inter-party government.
A SERIES OF framed Irish Times cartoons from that tribunal now features prominently in the museum at Kilbeggan: part of the distillery’s latest lease of life. Led by community volunteers, the restoration began back in 1982, when the building was almost empty and falling into disrepair. Then Cooley Distillery, prominent players in a latter-day revival in Irish whiskey manufacturing (and now owned by US conglomerate Beam), took over.
So these days, Kilbeggan is also a working museum: whiskey production having resumed on a modest scale just in time for its 250th anniversary in 2007. On the day I was there, a French tour group – one of umpteen coach tours that now visit daily – was able to taste the first fruits of the revival, a young malted blend.
Other kinds of whiskey take longer, however. And among those waiting for Kilbeggan’s next generation of product to mature are the British folk-rock band Mumford Sons, whiskey enthusiasts and recent visitors, who have their name (literally) on a barrel, the contents of which are still improving.
In some ways, the very things that held Irish distilling back, historically, now add to Kilbeggan’s charms. The small-scale production gives the distillery an internal ambience that the bigger, more modernised Scottish distilleries lack. As for the building’s exterior, it will be even more picturesque soon, when the mill-race flows again and the wheel resumes turning against the backdrop of the centuries-old whitewashed walls.