Get up close and personal with your favourite gin on a tour of one of the many distilleries that have poured forth in recent years.
The Connacht Distillery in Ballina, Co Mayo welcomes visitors to its distillery and gift shop. According to Avril Danagher, marketing manager for the distillery, which makes Conncullin Gin, it hopes to restart tours – depending on government guidelines – in June, with all small group tours led by a brand ambassador and finishing up with a tasting from the lovely vantage point of its Mullarkey Bar overlooking the River Moy.
The bar was hand-crafted from repurposed timber flooring that came originally from Dublin’s Boland Mills, and saw unexpected action during the 1916 Easter Rising.
In Donegal check out Sliabh Liag Distillers, a family-owned craft distillery whose tours tell the story of the county’s proud, if previously somewhat illicit, distilling heritage, and are a terrific introduction to its Irish Maritime Gin, An Dúlamán.
The distillery opened in 2017 by husband and wife team James and Moira Doherty on the outskirts of Carrick and is in the process of moving to Ardara. According to marketing manager Deirdre Byrne it will most likely be next year before it reopens for tours, so is one to keep in mind for then.
In Leitrim The Shed distillery overlooks the shores of Lough Allen in the village of Drumshanbo, and is home of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin.
The result of a €3 million investment, The Shed includes two separate tasting bars as well as a café and gift shop. A fully guided tour includes tastings of its Premier Grand Cru Irish Whiskey and finishes up with a gin and tonic at its Honey Badger Bar, in its Botanical Glass House. Check social media for opening dates.
Rebel City Distillery was launched last June by Robert and Bhaghya Barrett. According to marketing manager Gemma Power staff have been itching to get tours up and running but have to wait until Government guidelines allow. "We're really hoping it will be July but we're still only guessing at this stage," says Power.
It will be worth the wait just to get inside the building, which is part of the old Ford factory in Cork’s industrial heartlands.The three-storey room has giant windows and an accordion door that opens fully, with much of the setting exactly as it was in its factory days.
Robert Barrett is a biochemist turned spirits expert with more than a decade of experience in the art of crafting and distilling premium spirits. He co-founded the boutique distillery with his wife, Bhaghya and father, Brendan.
They’ve installed tasting facilities, including a handmade bar where you can enjoy their Maharani Gin, inspired by Bhagya’s native Kerala, in India. The distillery will open for private functions and corporate events, says Power.
Skellig Six18 Gin is located in Cahersiveen, Co Kerry. Visitors will get a €5 voucher towards a bottle in the gift shop and, because the tour is run by locals, tips on the best places to see and visit in the area too. If you’re staying in the region, come back at night for its Gin School, a chance to design, distil, taste, bottle and label your own gin.
Dublin’s Stillgarden Distillery offers a tour of its botanical garden, to hear how a community project took an area of urban wasteland in Dublin 8 and gave it a new lease of floral life. Finish up with a house cocktail on its heated terrace.
Keep an eye on its website for upcoming events including cocktail master classes, learning how to create your own signature cocktails, or sign up for its Distilling Academy, a hands-on guide through the history and science of spirits, including a chance to make and bottle your own tipple. Each spirit gets its own unique code, so you can reorder it whenever you want.
Covid has forced many to close to visitors over the past year, with some distilleries unsure when they will restart group tours, so make sure to check before you travel.
Sling Shot’s Gin School
Lough Ree Distillery in Lanesborough, Co Longford, opened its micro distillery in summer 2018, with a bespoke copper pot still with a capacity of just 150 litres, which its owners, the Clancy family, call Maeve. It’s here that they produce their multi award-winning Sling Shot Distilled Irish Gin.
They are thinking bigger, however. A new distillery is in train next door, located in a beautiful Georgian building just 50m from Lanesborough’s historic, 1,000-year-old bridge on the Shannon, with views over Lough Ree.
When it opens in 2022 the property, which dates from 1806, will give the Clancy’s the space they need to build a state of the art production facility to distill a variety of products, mature casks on site, and house a visitor centre.
When normal service is resumed to the world, Dublin based gin lovers can enrol in Sling Shot’s Gin School, which opened in December 2019 (and of course, closed the following March).
The reopening schedule is hazy, depending on Government guidelines, but keep an eye out for it when it returns to Churchtown Stores in Dublin 14.
“We’re very cautious about reopening the gin school,” says co-founder Michael Clancy, who has acted as host on many gin school occasions. “People come along and get a choice of up to 30 different botanicals which they can smell and decide they’d like to use. We give them a little weighing scales and provide them with recipes – just to keep them between the ditches, so to speak,” he says.
“Then we give them a little copper still with alcohol and the botanicals and they turn it on and start distilling... We give them a background history of gin, and, when it’s ready, they walk out with a bottle of their own gin with their name on the label. It’s a great experience.”
While we wait for that to reopen, Sling Shot lovers can sign up for the company’s highly successful lockdown pivot: its Gin School at Home kits.
The botanicals used depend on the season but could include elderflower, pea, spruce tips, cacao nibs and hibiscus. Everything in the pack is distilled by hand in the microdistillery in Lanesborough and pre-diluted to 40% ABV, so all you have to do is follow the instructions and make a gin to your own taste.
“It has gone very well for us, companies have used it for their staff parties too, on guided Zoom calls – it’s a great one,” says Clancy.
