Athrú Founder Update

Hi,

I’m David Raethorne, founder of the Lough Gill Distillery. This is the first of my founder blogs where I look forward to sharing the story of our journey.

So how did our distillery come to be located in Hazelwood Demesne, a 300-year-old estate on the banks of Lough Gill, on Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way?

First, a bit of background. We bought the old Hazelwood Estate in Sligo, Ireland in late 2014. It included one hundred acres of a peninsula in Lough Gill (Gaelic for Bright Lake) frequented by W.B. Yeats (and the location for his most famous work, The Lake Isle of Innisfree).

Also included was the Estate House, which was built in 1722, by one of Ireland’s most famous architects, Richard Cassels; as well as the Saehan Media factory, once the largest building in the West of Ireland.

Over the past five years, there has been a gentle but ambitious transformation, as this once-upon-a-time landed estate became the home of an ambitious new distillery, rooted in the history, heritage, myth, and legend of County Sligo.

In 2016, we received planning permission to turn the factory into a single-malt Whiskey Distillery with associated warehousing. 2018 saw the delivery to Hazelwood of world-class distillery equipment from Frilli (Italy) which was then commissioned during 2019.

The Athrú team is a brilliantly talented team of locals who don’t just know all there is to know about our whiskey, they’ve been on the journey with us too - from helping to design and build the distillery to crafting our fine spirit, they’ve been with us every step of the way.

As the team gained confidence with operating the equipment we gradually ramped up production. At full capacity, we can produce 1,000,000 Litres of Pure Alcohol. In 2020, our first full year of production, we distilled around 300,000 LPA which is about one-third of our potential capacity.

We have taken the brave approach to just produce single malt; no grain, no blends, no gin, no vodka, just ultra-premium triple-distilled single-malt Irish whiskey, made with the best Irish malted barley (from the Hook Head Peninsula in Wexford, Ireland) and naturally filtered Irish water (sourced locally from our deep underground aquifer), and stored in the best Makers Mark “Select” ex-bourbon casks.

So, we currently have an amazing variety of unusual casks of our own new-make spirit in our bonded warehouse, and we will shortly be making a small quantity of this available to customers who want to join us on this amazing journey.

We are now five years in, but the adventure is only just starting.

More anon.