The next time you’re ordering a cocktail in Warsaw, Berlin, or Lagos, consider making it a Tipperary or an Irish Coffee: Recently, exports from Ireland to Poland, Germany, Nigeria, and other emerging whiskey scenes have soared.
Those new(ish) markets represent a much-needed spot of good news for Irish whiskey — and an example of how the country’s distillers are finding workable solutions in a difficult era. After a decade and a half of spectacular growth, mostly fueled by exports to the U.S., the Irish whiskey industry has been going through some things, as James Doherty, founder of Sliabh Liag Distillers, explains.
“I’ve been in the industry for 25 years,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve seen as soft a market as you can see right now.”
Newspapers have described the situation in much starker terms. “Irish whiskey makers crumble under Trump’s trade tariffs,” Bloomberg wrote in August, after which The Irish Independent reported that “Backers fear the ‘liquid gold’ bubble has burst.” A few weeks later, The Irish Times asked if “the heat has gone out” of the industry.
Journalistic hyperbole aside, several high-profile makers have shut down in the past year, including Waterford Whiskey in November 2024, followed by Killarney Brewing & Distilling Co. — which called itself Ireland’s largest independently owned beer and whiskey producer — this summer. Last week it was announced that a liquidator would be appointed for Nephin Whiskey, the first new distillery in Connacht in a century. Other producers have paused operations, at least temporarily, including the Dublin Liberties Distillery and Diageo’s Roe & Co. According to The Irish Times, over 90 percent of Irish distilleries have paused or reduced production this year.
But despite the bad news, Ireland’s distillers are finding a way through the challenges they face. For many makers, that means cutting costs. For others, that means looking for new markets to replace some of the demand from the U.S., sometimes in unexpected places.
A Focus on Survival
It should be said that Irish whiskey’s current difficulties come after a period of spectacular growth and success, which itself came only after the industry squeaked past a near-death experience a little over half a century ago, when it got down to just two working distilleries. By 2010, there were four: three in the Republic of Ireland — Cooley, Kilbeggan, and the New Midleton Distillery, maker of Jameson and Powers — and just one, the Old Bushmills Distillery, in Northern Ireland. But by 2024, that count had swollen to some 50 makers, including famous names like Teeling and Tullamore D.E.W., as well as dozens of small producers. (Size and breadth are important parts of the picture. For comparison, there are currently 152 whisky makers in Scotland, according to the Scotch Whisky Association, while the value of Scotland’s 2024 whisky exports was about six times that of Irish whiskey.)
The boom in Irish distilling was fueled in large part by sales to the U.S., where imports of “high-end premium” and “super-premium” bottles grew by 826 and 1,819 percent from 2003 to 2024, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), with a total of 4.8 million cases last year (down significantly from a high of 6.1 million cases in 2022). From 2012 to 2022, exports to the U.S. nearly tripled, accounting for over 40 percent of all Irish whiskey sales that year, according to a report from Drinks Ireland.
While the causes of the tough times today include the 15 percent tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on most goods from the EU, it’s not just about new taxes. Doherty says that operating costs have also risen dramatically over the last few years.
“Ten years ago when I wrote the business plan for this, the cost of a barrel was $75. The cost of a ton of grain was $500 and less,” he says. “Now a barrel is $300. Grain topped out at €1,300 a ton, back now down to around €700. And energy prices doubled too. There aren’t many businesses that can survive that radical a change.”
“Some companies are reducing their headcount. So some companies have gone from being 24 hours to having 12-hour production shifts.”
In part, survival will depend on cash flow, Doherty says: Distilling is cash-intensive, and secure financing is an essential part of business. If lenders start to get cold feet, it could mean trouble for the industry as a whole. “We chew through a lot of cash in laying down stock,” he says. “I think one of the fears from an industry perspective is that when banks fall out of love, they don’t fall out of love with one brand — they tend to go cold on the category.”
As such, cutting costs is one way to keep things on track. At Sliabh Liag, maker of Silkie, Ardara, and other whiskeys, that process initially started with the steep rise in energy and grain prices at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. It’s arguably even more important today.
“We’re all trying to manage the businesses much more effectively,” Doherty says. “Anybody who’s built a distillery in the last 10 years is managing for cash now.”
That approach seems to have helped. Eoin Ó Catháin, director of the Irish Whiskey Association, points out that most of the distilleries that paused production earlier this year have now resumed work. But going forward, expenses will remain a concern.
“Some companies are reducing their headcount,” Ó Catháin says. “So some companies have gone from being 24 hours to having 12-hour production shifts.”
The association has helped to push back against costs, including new labeling requirements for distilleries that had been set to launch next year.
“We worked an awful lot with the government to impress upon them that this was the wrong time to start introducing additional requirements and increasing the burden of regulation,” he says. “We’re very glad to say that this has been deferred until 2028.”
Attracting New Customers Everywhere
Beyond cutting costs, postponing regulations, and improving cash flow, many distillers are looking for new customers. Ó Catháin recently gave a keynote at a conference in Mexico, after which both the U.K. and Irish embassies held events in Mexico City to promote Irish whiskey, including Northern Ireland’s Bushmills — owned by Proximo Spirits, a.k.a. Jose Cuervo — and Pernod Ricard’s Jameson, as well as smaller Irish brands like Clonakilty.
“We were all there celebrating whiskey together,” he says.
Other brands have found success even farther from home. Exports to Japan have grown sharply, Ó Catháin says, climbing from around 50,000 cases five years ago to more than 200,000 today. And despite tariffs of 150 percent, exports to India rose by 57.5 percent in 2024, The Irish Examiner reported.
Fionn Cox, founder of Element Irish Whiskey, used experience working abroad to expand his brand’s sales in Nigeria by almost 50 percent last year.
“In Ireland, these options are more extensive, and distilleries have begun to use barrels made from chestnut or acacia, for example. Simply put, the opportunity to try something new made us more interested in Ireland.”
“I think my connections and the network that I built out there allowed us to get as far as we have,” he says. “The demographics are fairly incredible — there’s almost 250 million people and a median age of 19 years old. And in every nightclub in Lagos, there’s bottles of Jameson and bottles of Guinness.” Produced at Great Northern Distillery in Dundalk, Element is currently seeking funding to pursue expansion in sub-Saharan Africa.
But not all of Ireland’s distillers are looking for customers so far away. Faced with stagnating sales in the U.S., Jameson is leaning into its partnership with the U.K.’s English Football League. And with Ireland firmly part of the EU, distillers are connecting with Old World countries that haven’t traditionally been known for their love of a dram. In fact, Poland is now the second-largest Irish whiskey market after the U.S., according to Drinks Ireland.
At leading Polish spirits retailer Dom Whisky, Bushmills’ 10 Year Old Single Malt is the current monthly special, on sale for 115 zloty (about $32), including tax. For Adrian Chwala, a brand ambassador for United Beverage Group, which owns Dom Whisky, Polish consumers are attracted by the value of Irish whiskey. “Another strength of the category is its wide flavor diversity within a very accessible price range,” Chwala says.
The country’s whiskey writers certainly seem to have enjoyed the variety. Over the last decade, Piotr Stachura has been covering whiskeys of all stripes at Whisky My Life, including some 116 bottlings from Ireland. For him, part of the appeal lies in barrel finishes that go beyond the strict limitations imposed on Scotch makers.
“In Ireland, these options are more extensive, and distilleries have begun to use barrels made from chestnut or acacia, for example,” he says. Another point of interest, he says, are historic recipes, like the Vintage Mashbill bottlings from Boann Distillery. A final piece of the puzzle was Brexit, which made it more difficult for Polish drinkers to obtain less common offerings from Scotland, while there was no such impediment for obscure whiskeys from Ireland, thanks to the EU’s single market. “Simply put, the opportunity to try something new made us more interested in Ireland,” Stachura says.
The various approaches seem to be paying off: After falling significantly in 2023, Irish whiskey exports actually grew 3.6 percent by total volume last year, up 17 percent in Poland and 11 percent in Germany, according to a report from the Irish Food Board.
For insiders, the reports of gloom and doom might be a bit overdone. Doherty acknowledges the difficulties, but adds that he doesn’t believe things are as bad as some of the headlines. Ó Catháin points to the potential for continued growth in EU markets, as well as upcoming negotiations between the bloc and India, with the potential to reduce the massive tariff on Irish whiskey in one of the largest whiskey markets in the world.
While things might be tough, he says, they’re certainly not as bad as when Ireland had just two distilleries.
“We’ve grown an awful lot over the past 15 years. We’ve gone through ups and downs before,” he says. “We have to think of how resilient we are as an industry.”
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