Bushmills director goes global with strong stuff

Whiskey brand plans to increase sales to one million cases worldwide thanks to a £4.5 million investment, writes Carissa Casey

The canny Scots may have trumped Irish whiskey makers in the international market, but Glaswegian-born Gordon Donoghue, supply director of Ireland's oldest distillery at Bushmills, is determined to buck the trend.

In the last year, Donoghue has overseen a £4.5 million (€6.7 million) investment and a doubling of whiskey production at the north Antrim distillery. "Irish whiskey accounts for just 5 per cent of whiskey sales annually. We intend to change that," he says.

Within five years, the Bushmills facility will be shipping one million cases of whiskey, compared with the current output of 400,000. The ramping up of production coincides with a major global marketing campaign.

"There are 40 million people in America who claim Irish descent and that's a huge potential market for starters. The Far Eastern market is pretty much untapped. People all over the world know about Irish whiskey, but they often don't ask for it by name. Scotch has become such a generic term," says Donoghue.

Donoghue worked at several of the 100-odd distilleries dotted throughout Scotland before arriving at Bushmills a year ago. It is one of three operating distilleries in Ireland and retains a certain cachet in the whiskey world. It still operates under the same licence awarded to it in 1608 by King James, in an area dubbed the "cradle of distillation".

Historical records show whiskey was first distilled there by monks, apparently for medicinal purposes.

"I knew about Bushmills long before I arrived here. There's so much tradition behind it. I also really liked the idea that Bushmills is a grain-to-glass facility - the entire process takes place here, from the fermentation of malted barley, through distilling, ageing, blending and bottling," says Donoghue. "There are very few places left that do that.

"It's an amazing feeling that wherever you go in the world, the bottle of Bushmills you see came out of this distillery."

Based in the tiny village of the same name, the Bushmills plant has a unique character. It is open to the public and receives about 120,000 visitors a year which, according to Donoghue, makes running the facility "challenging". "It does remind you all the time just how much interest there is in the plant and the process," he says.

The plant employs 80 full-time staff and up to 40 temporary workers at peak periods, making it by far the biggest employer in the area. Even local MP and well-known teetotaller Rev Ian Paisley has paid it an official visit.

"We have second and third generations of families working here. In a lot of ways it's their plant and they're really passionate about the brand - it belongs to them."

Until last year, Bushmills was owned by Pernod Ricard, which makes the biggest selling Irish whiskey, Jameson. Diageo - makers of the biggest selling Scotch in the world, Johnny Walker - bought it for £200 million a year ago.

A comparison of the two leading brands' sales figures illustrates by just how much Irish lags Scotch. Of the 400 million cases of whiskey sold throughout the world each year, Johnny Walker accounts for 50 million, while Jameson accounts for just two million.

Being Diageo's only Irish brand puts Bushmills centre stage within the global giant, says Donoghue. He works closely with the brand's marketing director, Cork-born Shivaun Lucey, to ensure that when the anticipated sales growth kicks in, stocks are there to fulfil demand.

This is a little trickier than it might seem, since it takes five years to mature Bushmills original whiskey and seven years to mature the other main brand, Black Bush. The single malts can take up to 21 years to mature.

"Forecasting is really difficult at the best of times. We're trying to match the volume of Black Bush we lay down in sherry casks now to what we'll need on the shelves in seven years' time. You take a market like Russia which is so volatile and we're trying to look that far ahead. Anything might have happened," explains Donoghue.

The Bushmills facility stretches across 60 acres in the village. There are seven giant warehouses holding about 150,000 barrels of whiskey at varying stages of the ageing process.

The oak barrels are bought from US bourbon makers in the case of Bushmills original, and Spanish sherry makers for the Black Bush brand. "They both have very distinctive flavours and part of that comes from the wood and what was aged in it before."

Until recently, the type and age of the whiskey were marked on the barrel with a stencil. As part of the recent upgrade, all the barrels were barcoded. In all, £1.5 million was invested in updating the facility's information systems. "We're hooked into the entire operation globally now," says Donoghue.

The distillery also has a new mash house, where the malted barley is fermented with yeast in the first stage of the production process. After this initial fermentation, the liquid, which has an alcohol volume of about 8 per cent, is distilled three times, bringing the alcohol content to about 85 per cent. It is this liquid, known as raw spirit, which is aged in the oak casks. At the end of the ageing process, the alcohol content has dropped a few percentage points, mostly through condensation, and this loss is known in the trade as "the angel's share".

The aged spirit is then blended and diluted to bring the alcohol volume down to the usual 32-35 per cent before it's bottled.

"Bushmills is unique in distilling three times. It's all part of the attention to detail here," says Donoghue. "We have a very distinctive product. We're determined now to get the message out there.