Irish Distillers Limited (IDL) is the leading distiller in Ireland, and indeed was for a period the only one. Known chiefly for its Jameson and Powers blended whiskies, it also makes an extensive range of single pot still whiskies, along with Cork dry gin and Huzzar vodka. The company was created as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to save the Irish Republic’s whisky industry. See whisky, Irish. The twentieth century had been brutal for Irish whisky, and in the 1960s, after two world wars, the Irish Rebellion, American Prohibition, and the Great Depression, Irish whisky exports were a shambles, and domestic consumption, based on a population of fewer than three million people, was not enough upon which to base a thriving industry. The eighteen working distilleries Alfred Barnard had found in the republic’s territory in 1887 were reduced to three (the ten in Northern Ireland were down to two). See
In 1966, therefore, the directors of John Power & Son (founded in 1796), John Jameson & Son (1810), and Cork Distilleries Co. (1867) decided to radically cut their costs by joining forces as Irish Distillers Limited. In 1972, Irish Distillers reached across the border and bought Bushmills, the last distillers in Northern Ireland. Then there was only one distilling company on the whole island. In 1975, Power’s and Jameson had closed their Dublin distilleries, and all the firm’s distilling was conducted at a new distillery built next to CDC’s old facility at Midleton, in County Cork. The New Midleton Distillery was designed to be able to duplicate each of the three firms’ characteristic whiskies. It had three enormous pot stills and three column stills, enabling it to make triple-distilled pot still whisky and column-distilled grain whisky (it made no malt whisky). In the distillery’s early years, the vast majority of its production went to pot still–grain blended whiskies, chiefly Jameson (for export) and Power’s (for the domestic market). For Tullamore and Paddy, both pot still–malt-grain blends, the malt whisky was sourced from Bushmills. IDL did also keep one pure pot still bottling, Redbreast 12, as a link to the company’s heritage. See single pot still.
Yet the company was dedicated not just to preserving Irish whisky but to reviving it. Thus in the late 1980s, when it was still struggling with export sales, it embarked on an ambitious program of upgrading its cooperage, replacing tired old barrels as they were emptied rather than reusing them. In 1988, however, the English Grand Metropolitan company, a minority stockholder, tendered a bid to buy the company, with the intent of breaking it up and disposing of some of its brands and assets. IDL resisted, reaching out to the French Pernod-Ricard company for help. Although the French company’s bid was lower, it guaranteed the integrity of the company, and it was accepted. See Pernod-Ricard.
Pernod, after extensive study, made Jameson one of its core brands and moved to market it not as a traditional Irish whisky but as a lifestyle brand for young adults, much in the way vodka was marketed. This strategy was enormously successful—so successful that Pernod’s divestment of Bushmills in 2005, Tullamore Dew a couple of years later, and Paddy in 2016 were not seen as threats to Irish Distillers’ integrity. By the early 2010s, the company was selling four times as much whisky in America as it had ten years before. At the same time, the investment in better cooperage was paying off as the company released award-winning whisky after award-winning whisky, including a new line of revived pot still whiskies and some superior old blends. In 2013, it added three more huge pot stills to the Midleton facility. Today some 20 percent of the pot still whisky made there is destined to be bottled unblended.
In recent years, IDL’s success with Jameson and pot still whiskies such as Yellow Spot and Power’s John’s Lane, along with prestige blends such as Midleton Very Rare, have in large part inspired a new boom in distilling in Ireland. It is a far cry from the sad days of 1966.
See also Crockett, Barry; and spirits trade, history of.
Greenhouse, Steven. “Pernod in Friendly Offer for Irish Distillers.” New York Times, September 6, 1988.
McGuire, E. B. Irish Whisky Dublin: Gill & MacMillan, 1973.
“Pernod-Ricard Bid Prevails in Battle for Irish Distillers.” New York Times, November 25, 1988.
Wondrich, David. Author’s notes, marketing presentation, Irish Distillers. Dublin, October, 2001.
By: David Wondrich