The Story of Walsh Whiskey: A Chat with Bernard Walsh

by Peter White

As whiskey fans we’re fortunate to have a large number of whiskey distilleries and independent bottlers plying their trade here in Ireland but it wasn’t always so. Before there was an explosion in interest in Irish whiskey and whiskey societies, there were only a few diehard people working hard to further the interest and growth in an Irish invention.

Bernard Walsh, one half of the husband and wife team that founded Walsh Whiskey, is one of those people. Affable, charming and extremely hardworking, together with his wife Rosemary, they ploughed a lonely furrow for a long time gradually pulling a team together which is still together to this day and which has succeeded in building their brands; Writers’ Tears and The Irishman into the renowned worldwide names that they now are.

I’m lucky to have known Bernard for many years and  have long wanted to sit down and hear the story of the building of these iconic brands and what challenges he faced along the way.

I began by asking him about his background and where he hails from.

B.W. I am from a farming family of 9 with 72 first cousins and a proud Tipperary man. Three of my brothers are still involved in farming and I started off tilling turnips in long drills for 10p per drill and milking cows on farm relief service Pre College. I was actually saving to buy my first motorbike. I have family scattered all over the world including cousins in Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, Viet Nam and my daughter is currently in Korea.

I just wanted to get out into the world and studied Computer Science and Software in college and went to Dublin and onto London. I also spent time in France and loved visiting the vineyards and the processes involved there. I also travelled all over the world while in the Software Industry which took me away from farming and rural life.

 

P.W. And so where did the interest in whiskey develop?

B.W. Well nobody in my family drank whiskey except for my grandfather. He had run a stud farm but unfortunately was blind for the last 20 years of his life. My grandmother would take him for his constitutional walk each day before dinner which was always at 12.30pm in rural Ireland. He would have a drop of whiskey, aperitif I guess, before dinner and I would often get to lick the glass and that was my first tasting of whiskey. That stuck with me and it was always a particular style of pot still whiskey. It was always stored in a press with the jams and marmalades. 

That was forgotten about for years whilst I trampled my way around Europe. I had met Rosie and was coming to Carlow since 1989 courting first of all, and followed her to the U.K. and on into France but we both wanted to return to Ireland and do something closely connected to farming but before this we had this mad idea that we would go back home and develop an Irish coffee. We both love Irish coffee but found it very difficult to get a good and consistent one whilst at the same time, not being too expensive. We wanted to create an Irish coffee that would be a consistent product and we would leave the high tech world and live in the countryside in Ireland.  We came home and Rosie developed the Irish coffee product itself using jam jars and we took it up to Catherine Hargan in Bord Bia in Dublin around 1997/98 and showed her this wonderful brown liquid in a jam jar. And that was the easy bit. Taking it to market and commercialising it was the next step and I got the job of sourcing the 2 major ingredients, whiskey and coffee for our new venture. I set off around Ireland thinking that I would be back in 3 days, job done. There were 3 whiskey houses to go to at that time in Antrim, Greenore and Cork and each of them made me feel very welcome, brilliant.  Three months later I was deep in it and obviously one house, down in Cork were really great and Billy Leighton gave me lots of his time. This experience succeeded in triggering in my head a bigger interest in whiskey and Irish whiskey in particular and led to my desire in developing the spirit. This is what I wanted to do and I was shocked that whilst researching whiskey I went to Boston, travelled around, went to bars to see what they would think of a new whiskey and I was told that we already have an Irish whiskey, we have one and why do we want another? There was no demand for Irish whiskey in 1999 and they were not looking for another Irish whiskey. This dented my confidence for maybe one day but I persevered.

We decided early on that pot/malt was an area that we would like to explore and develop and that’s what we set out to do. From 1999 until now, we have never put grain into either The Irishman or Writers Tears. 

We then embarked on our journey and literally wore out shoe leather getting the company off the ground. There are a lot of newcomers now not willing to wear out the shoe leather, the amount of shows that we did; we did every horse show, the Tullow show, the Tullamore show, Limerick agricultural shows. There were no whiskey shows, no societies, we would go over to London and do tastings, shows and festivals there. It is so much easier for anybody to get into the Irish whisky business now and get going than it was back then. Nobody was looking for another Irish whiskey, we had to create the demand and get the business going. That was really the hardest part, getting that demand going.

 

P.W. You have managed to hold onto your original team which speaks a lot to your management style. I recall that when the Irish Whiskey Society started up and we had our first tastings; that the ambassadors who presented then, Ger Garland, Seamus Lowry and John Quinn are still with their brands but that there is now a higher ambassador’s turnover from company to company. Is that fair to say? Is there the same loyalty from either party as there was then?

B.W. The current Generation are far more mobile than we were and that’s the way it is. We hire a lot of young people and put a lot into their training and you do get disappointed when they decide six months later that they want to move abroad or go somewhere else. I understand that but it’s difficult and there’s nothing we can do about it.

We have been lucky to retain the core of our team over the years but we have seen a few take flight after many years such as Shane Fitzharris. While you’d naturally like to keep the dream team sometimes you can feel a great sense of pride seeing them spread their wings as Shane has done.   He’s a proud son of ours and he learned his trade here the hard way on the street when it was real graft. His first job with me was at the ploughing championships in Tullow and Shane was there selling whiskey stuck in the mud. It was great craic but also hard work and not so glamorous. The farmers of course loved a drop of whiskey and we were selling it by the horse box load. The core of our team are still here with me; Geraldine, Clare, Emily, Mary, Brian & Miriam, and getting younger every day! 

 

P.W. And how did it evolve from there? 

B.W. It’s all got to do with people and it’s the way that we go about our business. We created this as an extension of home life, we started it out in our home and when you have got your first employees coming to work out of your home, you can create this family atmosphere and everyone looks after each other as best they can. 

 

P.W. Where did the idea for the brands and their names come from? 

B.W. I was discouraged from telling the original ‘Irishman’ story by our marketers because it touched on a very touchy subject. When I first went to Boston in 1999, I was asked at every bar whether it was a Protestant whiskey or a Catholic whiskey. I said neither, it’s an Irish whiskey and that’s where it happened. I’m paraphrasing here but Wolfe Tone in 1798 said that ‘he didn’t want to be known as a Catholic or a Protestant, I just want to be known as an Irishman.’ We are proud Irishmen and Irishwomen and our religion doesn’t define us, our Irishness does. 

The Writers’ Tears idea came about through the early 2000’s. I became distracted when I was in the U.S. again and I loved just what was happening with bourbon at that time. It was so edgy, there was Hudson and Stranahans, all of these edgy whiskeys coming out doing things differently, challenging the authority of Kentucky and I was just so fascinated by that and so I wanted to create a separate Irish whiskey, apart from the Irishman which is more traditional focusing on the malt. I wanted to do something edgier and Writers’ Tears allows me to do that. The new face of Irish whiskey and I was definitely influenced by what was happening in the U.S. Nothing on the Irish shelf looks like it and even to this day, the look, feel and taste is unique in its own right. 

 

The initial concept with the name was formed around writers block after the 18/1900s which was a great era for Irish writing and the story about the old Dublin pubs and the writers who would frequent them drinking this old style Irish pot still whiskey; Wilde, Yeats or Joyce watching life go by, observing the daily hum drum of life.

We were looking at the Golden Era of Irish whiskey and we wanted to learn from it. Thus Writers’ Tears was born, the champagne of Irish whiskey, a blend of pot still and single malt Irish whiskies. 

 

P.W. You have seen major changes in the industry since you got started, what has surprised you most? 

B.W. The number of distillery’s that we have in Ireland now. I foresaw 20, maybe 30 eventually but never 40 which is probably near what we have today.  I always knew that for the industry to grow, it wasn’t good just to have a handful of distillers and a handful of whiskey companies and we were part of the new vanguard challenging the bigger guys. For example, we brought out the first cask strength whiskey commercially available in living memory, The Irishman and this in turn brings about a chain reaction further down the line.

When someone brings out a Mizunara finish, or a Seaweed IPA cask finish, what does that do? It prompts the bigger guys or someone else to do something different. We need to push the boundaries. Prior to 1999, there was no need for that. I’m not being disrespectful but prior to that there was no need for them to come out of their shell. We started to prod and others started to prod and things have evolved. 

 

P.W. When did you first start thinking of having your own distillery, how did you feel when you got it off the ground and when you parted company with it and your feelings around it now? I was lucky enough to be there for the actual sod turning at the beginning and then at the opening itself which was a wonderful day in a spectacular location.

B.W. My first quote for the distillery was from Richard Forsyth Snr. in 2008 and they are the kingmakers when it comes to really good copper pots. We went to the best and it was a lot of money and I realised that I needed to do two things here; I need to have brand and route to market sorted before we could justify building and running a distillery. I think that it was Richard who said to me that I would need one third of my investment just to build the distillery, one third for the brand and one third to build up the stock.  That’s what was said to me and I was determined to make it happen, that was part of the dream at the very beginning. We visited 15 sites and Royal Oak was the first site I visited and ultimately the last one we settled on. In November 2011, myself & the family were out for a Sunday drive and we passed by Royal Oak and I asked Rosie who lived there. Nobody, it was a ruins. I drove by myself the following morning at 7am and clambered over the broken gate and on up the drive and awoke all of the birds who were nesting there. The sun came up and I knew at that point that this was the place to build our distillery. We fell in love with Royal Oak, it backs onto the River Barrow and it took 2 years to convince the landowner to sell to us. 

We then had a wonderful sod turning with all of our family, friends, neighbours, members of the Whiskey Industry and international customers. It was a really special & lovely experience and very important for us. That was September, the diggers rolled in in December pulling back the top soil, the first concrete was poured in January 2015 and in March 2016 we had the first distillate come off the stills. We first commissioned with the single malt and then the single pot still by the summer of 2016 and the grain came also in the summer of ’16; a lot of work in a very short space of time. We also produced Irelands first organic pot still whiskey (new make). We were learning all the time, in perfecting the distillate, in developing a reliable supply chain of quality ingredients from Barley to Wood.

My family and I lived every day of that distillery, every piece of grass that was pulled back, every piece of concrete that was poured, every nut and bolt that went in there we knew about; the finishes, we picked them all and we were just so connected with it that it wasn’t just a build project. The paint, the colour that was used, Rosie was all over it and wanted to give her input to ensure that it reflected what we wanted. It was the first time to have a new distillery in our area, and we were sitting in an old setting, in a crumbling old house which we subsequently renovated and restored and it was standing beside that newness of the distillery. We wanted the new distillery not to jar with the old but to sit comfortably with it. Let’s have it sitting there nicely in the Irish countryside. We had many a strong discussion with architects, planners, builders and engineers because we stuck to our guns. 

 

P.W. How do you feel about it now, looking back?

B.W. We built something that will be there long after we are gone, and long after the current owners are gone. It’s great for the local parish, it’s important for the development of Irish whiskey so we’re really proud of it and unfortunately the Irish shareholders and the Italian shareholders could not live in the same house together. I remember the Italians saying to me that it’s not personal it’s just business but it was personal to us. We put every ounce of sweat and blood into this.

 

P.W. We would of course be remiss not to mention Woody Kane who was also part of your team for so long and who is Royal Oaks Global Brand Ambassador. 

B.W. Of course, Woody is with Illva now but he will always be a part of our family and a good friend. 

 

P.W. Your thoughts around the Irishman movie and its use of your branding? Just how did this come about, was it a coincidence?

B.W. That movie was in the making for ten years, they wanted to make that movie for ten years and we know this because they did contact us when they were raising money and approaching different organisations and we got emails and calls from agents telling us about it. The monies that they were talking about were telephone numbers and we were not in a position to do anything and nothing happened. For years nothing happened and then we got a call, giving us maybe 6/9 months’ notice telling us that the movie was coming out.  We knew then that they had gotten the funds to proceed and we enquired as to whether we could get involved in the launch event and at this point we had seen the trailer and the use of our logo which we were ok with and so we wrote to them to ask whether there was chance we could get in with the launch event. They put The Irishman in 18 theatres around New York at the launch week and The Irishman was pouring and flowing in all of them and prior to the launch, the full cast, Pacino, the lot of them, they each got a personalised Irishman bottle with their name and bottle number hand delivered to them at the studio. I didn’t get to personally meet any of them at the time. We were extremely happy to be invited to the Oscar Wilde pre-Oscar party after that where The Irishman & Writers’ Tears was the pouring whiskey at the most recent event some months ago which is obviously great for us. 

 

P.W. Your thoughts on the collaborations with us at Dick Macks? Had you ever given it any thought before Shane Fitzharris and I raised it as a possibility? 

B.W. I have to credit Shane and yourself with the concept. We were so so busy and continually looking at the whole experimentation side and the conversation between you too really brought it all together. I thought to myself that this was how we could broaden out the whole taste profile of Irish whiskey which I’ve been banging on about for years, layering in through collaboration these depths of flavour from non-traditional casks be it in the wood or in this case the seasoning of the finish. I just love the concept and doing it with yourself, Finn and Dick Macks, friends and you’re passionate about what you do. The Brewhouse, you guys delivered on that project and that passion just flows through to us, we just love that collaboration. We do lots of collaborations around the world, the Inniskillin Winery in Niagara is another one but our number 1 is the Dick Macks one with you guys always. Every year we look forward to the next conversation when we look to be challenged and you have continually turned our heads. 

 

P.W. And your favourite so far? 

B.W. You know what I’m going to say! The coffee stout one, that was the first. That’s my favourite, not commercially viable but my favourite. We did have a problem with cloudiness but we didn’t want to filter it and lose some of the abv, notes or the creaminess but you told me that it was fine and it was. I loved it as it was and just didn’t want to dilute it. That made it for me although I have a special grá for the Seaweed IPA as I didn’t believe that the salty note could transfer as much as it did and I love that. The collaborations are all about people; our people, your people and the willingness to make it work. 

P.W. Your thoughts on the recent takeover by the Amber Beverage Group? How long were you working on this and who approached who?

B.W. This was a short and simple process. Amber Beverage Group approached us after they fell in love with our brands, The Irishman and Writers’ Tears. They asked whether we would go into partnership with them and we said no, we’ve had partnerships before and I thought that was that. They returned a week later and made an offer for 100% of the company and also said that they would love us to run the business for them and that turned my head. For my family, everyone that worked for us, including our patient Irish shareholders, it was a fantastic return for everybody. From our oldest employees to our newest employees, for Rosie, our long standing Directors, this was a terrific outcome. It had been a long road and for me, this was a perfect next chapter. This was a great moment and opportunity for the brands and they are going into a big stable, a global firm. Amber are very ambitious, they really believe in the Irish category; it’s the first whiskey category that they’ve invested in, before Scotch, before American and they really are ambitious for here. I’m getting to play a part in that which is really rewarding. They’re very keen to invest in us here and are willing to back new ideas and experimentation in new casks or liquids that I want to work with. They equally want to have a distillery presence here in Ireland and hopefully we’ll build or buy one in the next couple of years. That is one of the stated aims going forward and underlines their ambition and you can understand just how happy that makes me feel. Let’s call it the fourth chapter. 

 

P.W. Your support of Sweny’s pharmacy and James Joyce. How did you become involved with this? 

B.W. This was through Fionnan O’Connor to be honest. Fionnan knew of our work; Writers’ Tears supporting various local arts & literary events such as our local ‘Writing and Ideas’ festival here in Borris in Carlow which is a wonderful festival, and brought our attention to the fact Sweny’s were under pressure to pay the rent and may have been forced to move out of the building. Sweny’s is part of Dublin’s literary culture and when it’s gone, it’s gone, there would be no coming back and this was the one chance to save it. We met the guys in Sweny’s, really good, colourful people and asked what they needed. So we write the cheque to help them pay the rent. We really need to wrap in cotton wool those cultural iconic buildings; leave and protect the gems and Sweny’s is a gem and to protect it of course, especially in this centenary year.

 

P.W. What are your views on the different societies around the country and what they bring to the whiskey industry? They obviously started off with the Irish Whiskey Society in Dublin in 2009 and have grown around the country with ones in Carlow, Cork, Dingle and Kilkenny, amongst many others now.  

B.W. I absolutely love the societies. When we started out, there were none in Ireland. In fact in most of the world there were no societies, apart from the big ones in Germany and Scandinavia. I’d come back from Sweden telling people that there were 120 whiskey societies there and people thought I was mad. They couldn’t understand it nor the benefit of what they did. The renaissance in Irish whiskey has really been heightened and elevated by the societies and what you are doing. You have been waving the flag for Irish whiskeys and indeed others and helped Irish whiskey no end. The societies gave us a platform and were heard outside Ireland. 

 

P.W. Other interests?

B.W. The family first and foremost. The daughters are all into hockey and I’ve travelled the country with them and they are also into horse riding which comes from Rosie’s side and we’re just back from a Hunter Trial at Stradbally Co. Laois. Our youngest rode at her first hunter trial there and it was a great day deep in the countryside. 

I have a natural interest in hurling, I love hurling (Tipperary by the grace of God … as they say). I am a member of the Tipperary supporters club and I have taken many different international visitors to a hurling match. It never ceases to amaze them when they see the game played at full tilt with the supporters from both sides mixed together and the banter between them.  Indeed we had our Russian distributors over back in 2012 and nothing seemed to impress them until we went to a game on the last day of their trip. I met them in The Palace Bar, bought some tickets on the street together with some hats and scarves and took them to see a semi-final, Galway & Cork. They were blown away by the game and went home really delighted with themselves. We set them up in a pub in Moscow to watch the final and they had a great time. 

Equally I should have said I am a long suffering Munster supporter, love the Rugby and then for my sanity a little bit of farming. We live on a small farm with horses, hens and dogs. So I’m often found pottering around the fields putting up or taking down fences but more often than not just watching the grass grow (very therapeutic).