glendalough distillery Craft spirits range

glendalough distillery Craft spirits range

GdL image Where we come from Glendalough {The Glen of Two Lakes} is a glacial valley nestled in the Wicklow Mountains. Just south of Dublin, County Wicklow is known as the garden of Ireland a reputation it lives up to with ease. Besides its natural beauty, Glendalough is renowned for its early medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St Kevin, a legendary monk and the man on our bottle. The craft of distilling drinks was invented and nurtured in Irish monasteries like Glendalough around this time. As an area of outstanding natural beauty and history, it is one of the most visited places in Ireland. It is a place that will stir your soul and lift your spirit. And for us, it is a unique home for our brands of whiskey, poitín and gin.

Glendalough Distillery Ireland s first craft distillery The Glendalough Distillery was set up by five friends from Wicklow and Dublin with a deep passion for reviving the heritage of craft distilling in Ireland. In the 18th & 19th centuries there were over 200 licenced distilleries in Ireland (and countless unlicensed ones) producing diverse styles of poitín, whiskey, gin and even absinthe. Until recently that dropped to a small handful. We couldn t sit idly by and allow this in the birthplace of distilled drink. We had all worked in and around the drinks industry but wanted to forge our own path, to set up something meaningful. Something that meant we could make innovative spirits while staying true to the tradition and heritage of our ancestors. Where the Glendalough Distillery story started was exactly where it should have - with the first ever spirit, poitín. It has since moved on to its natural progression, whiskey. And on again to our latest set of seasonal, wild botanical gins with a depth of flavour and a drinking experience that simply doesn t exist today in Irish distilling, or maybe anywhere.

Reintroducing the oldest spirit in the world Our product line starts exactly where it should - with the first drink ever to be distilled, poitín (earliest records we can find are 584ad). Long before there was Irish whiskey there was poitín {potcheen}. Every distilled drink across the world from rum to gin, to vodka or absinthe, you name it, can trace its ancestry straight back to poitín. The oldest distilled drink in the world, it was first made with expertise and reverence by Irish monks in the 6th century. Such was its quality, it outsold Irish whiskey for a thousand years. In 1661 it was outlawed and forced into the wilderness, where it enjoyed an illicit romanticism. Remote glens like Glendalough, were used. The winds swept through, broke up the smoke from the peat fires, and kept prying eyes, and the law away. Glendalough poitín is a carefully crafted, small-batch expression of this drink. We ve harnessed tradition, heritage and provenance to capture more than fourteen centuries of distilling expertise in this notorious drink. Made in the old style with malted barley and sugar beet, it s then aged in virgin Irish oak for more mellowness and depth of flavor. The result is a smooth, yet mosaic mix of malted barley sugars and toasted, woody flavors. It s a drink that s as complex in its taste as it is in its history. A drink that truly captures the original Irish spirit. Traditionally drunk neat, we like it over ice. However because of its robust flavor, we find that it will really hold its own and add depth to mixed drinks and cocktails. Over the next few hundred years it lived in whispered infamy between chancers, bowsies and divils. Amongst winks, nods and backhanders. Until now.

Single Malt Irish Whiskey Our single malt goes back to the source of what made Irish Whiskey great. This is the whiskey that your great granddaddy drank. Known as the champagne of whiskey it is crafted using age-old traditional methods to create a style of whiskey that once ruled the world - we consider these special whiskeys a sort of second coming for Irish single malt. The maritime climate on the east coast of Ireland provides perfect aging conditions for whiskey. At The Glendalough Distillery we carefully select a small number of these casks that best represent the full, rounded and smooth flavor of an Irish single malt. The whiskey is then cut to 46% with Wicklow mountain water. Keeping it at or above 46% means we can avoid chill filtering and stay true to a taste and character of whiskey that was sipped a century ago in the heyday of Irish single malt. Today, there are two types of Irish whiskey in the world. One that s drank in a rush under neon lights and another for those who know better. Welcome to the latter.

Both of these single malts were, of course, made from 100% malted Irish barley. They then spent their long years in first fill American Bourbon casks, mellowing and deepening flavor. Why seven and thirteen? Well, our hero, the outstanding St Kevin spent seven years in the wild before he built the city of seven churches (Glendalough s nickname). You ll see the seven silver crosses on the label - these show where the ancient ruins of the seven churches are positioned in the valley of Glendalough. The thirteen year old is a whole other story. A lucky number for us, a luckier one for Ireland, and the number of another outstanding Irish hero. On this bottle, the eggs in Kevin s hand get the silver, if you know the story, these symbolise putting in the hard yards. Sure we ll tell you about that another time.

A new calibre of Irish Whiskey Single grain, double-barrel aged This whiskey, like Glendalough itself, was born out of a wild Irish streak. The man on our bottle, St Kevin carved out his own path and this whiskey dares to do the same in a world of copycats and same old styles. There are those who prefer to sip the status quo. Our Double Barrel is not for them. A single grain Irish whiskey to blast the cobwebs off, it s a new path taken by a new breed. Glendalough Double Barrel has sucked the marrow out of two casks, Bourbon and Sherry. Both represent a world gone by, from the rolling hills of Bourbon county to the ancient frontier of south west Spain. They each bring their own unique flavor, and character, fastened finally by an independent Irish streak. Ireland s mild maritime climate plays its part too. The temperate winds that wash through her valleys give a gentle, sure aging. And our cold, fresh Wicklow mountain water couldn t double be better barrel for cutting cask-strength whiskey. Best thing to do is draw a bead and gauge it for yourself.

The aging area at Glendalough Distillery. Designed and built by our mate Tom the carpenter after a late night philosophical debate about whiskey making being about the closest human endevour to bees making honey

Wild Botanical Gin This is a gin unlike any other. Even from year to year, it will differ from the previous batch. Each season we go out into the wilds of the Wicklow mountains and forage with our botanist friend, Geraldine. We pick what grows and distill with it the very next day. This is the garden of Ireland in a bottle. Even when you look into the bottle you can see the place it has come from - with each bottle having a landscape photo taken on the day of our foraging. This is a gin with not only a sense of place, but a sense of time too. It is the very definition of hand made. From the ingredients, to the bottling and labeling, we do this meticulously with our own hands - there s no easy way. But the result, the result is so worth the effort. Rare, unique and tiny little batches - what s not to love? They say distilling is an extension of agriculture. We never appreciated that fully, until we started making this gin - at the mercy of nature and her seasons. While the spring gin is a fresh mix of young green shoots, wild botanical leaves and flowers, the summer gin tastes like a meadow in bloom, with amazing floral flavors and light early fruits. Autumn is as you d expect, only even more so. Packed with wild fruits and berries, it s the bounty of the surrounding mountains bottled. And we won t lie, our Winter gin is a tough one to get out. Some years we can t even make a batch, it completely depends on what kind of winter we get. Either way, with each taste, these gins transport you to a place and time in our home - the Wicklow Mountains.

Wild about Wicklow We make it with a base of 11 regular gin ingredients and then add 10 or 15 more of whatever is good and growing wild in the mountains around the distillery. It all goes into a copper, Holstein still where the magic happens. The base ingredients common to each batch. Juniper berries, corriander seeds, lemon peel, angelica root, licourice root, bitter almond, orris root, darred malt, ceylon cinnamon, ginger and all spice. Here are just some of the local, wild plants that have gone in to the four seasonal batches this year. Spring Gorse flowers, dandelion flowers, ginger, beech leaves, sweet cicely, primrose flowers, hawthorn leaves, woodruff leaves and flowers, ground ivy, wood sorrel, birch sap, water mint and much more. Summer Pine shoots and needles, elderflower, blackberry flowers, clover flowers, lemon balm, lavender flowers, orange flower, willow leaves, wild raspberry leaves, fraughan berries, and lots more. Autumn Nettle, watermint, clover flowers, ground ivy, heather flowers, rosehip, blackberries, fraughan berries, elderberries, sloe, crab apples, haws, yarrows, damson, meadowsweet and loads of other wild bounty. Winter Sloe berries, hawthorn berries, bog myrtle, rosemary sage, cloves, fennel seeds, ground ivy, rowan berries and whatever else we can eek out in the harsh mountain winters.