'The distillery was very much a family affair': 200 years of distilling in Cork 

Carol Quinn knows her whiskey. Not just in terms of taste – although she’s partial to a drop of Powers with soda water – but, as Ireland’s only whiskey archivist, she’s an expert in the history of distilling.

It was in her role as Head of Archives at Irish Distillers that Carol delivered a speech at the recent conference, ‘There’s Whisk(e)y in the Jar’, hosted by Youghal Celebrates History.

The public event marked 200 years of distilling in East Cork and delved into the history of whiskey-making in the region. Carol’s speech focused on the history of Midleton Distillery, which first established its operations in 1825.

“The company has a long distilling tradition,” says Carol, reflecting on when she first came into post at Irish Distillers 13 years ago. “And when I joined, it was an era of expansion with the new still house being built. So as part of that bigger project, the company looked at its history in its entirety and said, ‘let’s get serious about this’.”

It was at that point that the distillery built a dedicated space for record storage and hired Carol as Head of Archives. In her time examining the records, she’s discovered numerous gems about a company that has, over the last two centuries, become a Cork – and Irish – institution.

Midleton Distillery was founded by the Murphy family, led by patriarch James Murphy, in 1825. The Murphys were a Catholic merchant family based in Cork City, whose primary trade at the time was in the import of luxury goods. Business was booming, but, as Carol explains, the Murphys had their hearts set on something new:

“They were entrepreneurs with a vision – they wanted to establish a family business that could be generational, passed down from father to son. And in this pivotal year, 1825, there had been a change in legislation. For the first time, duty-free warehouses were set up in Ireland. What this means is that you could distil your whiskey, store it and not pay the tax or duty on it until you’ve sold it – until you’ve got the cash flow going. This was a game-changer”.

The Murphy family saw the opportunity that this legislative change offered, and they leapt at it. But with an established presence in the city, why did they make the move all the way out to Midleton? As Carol jokes, this was long before the days of the Jack Lynch Tunnel! Access to the East Cork town was no mean feat in the days of horse and cart.

“They settled in Midleton for three key reasons,” Carol explains. “One of the most important was the proximity to Ballinacurra Harbour – it’s less than one kilometre away”.

In the days before flight, a route to the seas was vital. As Carol notes: “I always say it’s like being located next to the main runway in Heathrow. They knew that access to the ocean was the route they needed to get their whiskey out to the world”.

The other two key reasons for choosing Midleton as the site for the distillery were the good, clean water available in the town and easy access to the barley fields of East Cork.

To this day, all the barley ordered for Midleton Distillery comes from a 200-kilometre radius around the site, and many farmers supplying the Distillery with the crop in 2025 are descendants of those first suppliers in the 1800s.

The establishment of the Midleton Distillery would transform the surrounding area. East Cork already had a mercantile history, but the distillery would bring significant new economic opportunities to the region. Agriculture is at the heart of whiskey-making, and the distillery provided local farmers with an almost guaranteed market for their barley. And the distilling process itself, which took place all through winter, created up to 200 jobs.

As Carol says: “Our wage books show that it’s often sons following fathers into working at the distillery. So at any one time you could have a grandfather, a father, a son and a grandson working alongside a cousin and an uncle. It was very much a family affair”.

As the company grew from strength to strength, not even Fr Mathew’s 1830s temperance movement could challenge it. The shift towards pioneerism posed a threat to other alcohol businesses in the Rebel county, but the Murphys, Carol explains, “had a trump card. Their uncle, John Murphy, was Bishop of Cork at the time. So Father Mathew tended to go light on the Murphys!”

Midleton Distillery, through the Murphy family’s globalist vision and contacts throughout the world, soon established itself as a titan of the spirits industry. Its luxury product rivalled champagne and cognac, and it was exported far and wide.

In 1854, less than 30 years after starting production, the company installed what is still today the world’s largest pot still. “That’s how big their vision and their ambition was for the distillery and their whiskey”, observes Carol.

Ambitions were challenged, however, during the dark days for Irish whiskey production in the 20th century. Trouble began with World War I and the sinking of shipping, then prohibition in 1920s America which hampered that important market. Later, the 1930s Anglo-Irish trade war prohibited Ireland exporting to anywhere in the British Empire, and things only got worse with the economic turmoil caused by World War II.

By the 1950s, Irish distilling was on its knees, with a new policy restricting exports adding insult to injury.

“That was the death knell for a lot of distilleries,” explains Carol. “So by the 1960s, there were only three working distilleries still in operation in the Republic of Ireland – John Jameson and Son and John Power and Son in Dublin, and the Cork Distilleries Company in Midleton”.

The three companies – all staunch competitors – realised that in this new economic reality, continued competition would wipe each other out, and Irish whiskey would be no more. So the family-run businesses decided to do something revolutionary – they joined forces and became the company, Irish Distillers, that we know today. The Dublin distilleries closed, and all production moved to Midleton, where a new distillation plant was built in 1975.

Irish whiskey received a further boost in 1988 when Irish Distillers merged with Pernod Ricard, the international drinks company, once again giving the spirit international market presence.

What would the Murphy forefathers of Midleton Distillery think of their legacy if they were here today? Carol suspects they wouldn’t be at all surprised about their enduring success.

“I think they’d say, ‘why not? Why wouldn’t it be successful?’” she notes of their confidence in their business and product. “But I think they would be really proud to know that it’s still being made in Midleton. The Midleton Distillery itself is still going strong, as is the tradition of making whiskey here.”

Irish Distillers’ sales record speaks for itself, with the world’s best-selling Irish whiskey, Jameson, made solely on site in Midleton. And interest in the craft and history of whiskey-making abounds, if the recent ‘There’s Whisk(e)y in the Jar’ conference is anything to go by. Carol’s hard work and passion for the whiskey archives have revealed an eventful and successful 200 years for the Midleton Distillery.

Cheers to another 200!

• To celebrate 200 years of whiskey production, Irish Distillers has partnered with Ancestry.ie to publish historic barley purchase records from Midleton Distillery from the period 1825-1834. Descendants of East Cork barley farmers can search their family records at https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/63101/