Nobody Shooting Whiskey Here! In late 2015. J.J. Corry was started with all of my personal savings in a converted cowshed here on my family farm in the parish of Cooraclare; population 320. I quit my job, sold all my Diageo shares brought in my husband and some friends and we decided to contribute to the resurgence of Irish Whiskey globally. Today we’ve announced our new national USA deal with Trinity Beverage Group. This is a step change for my little business. Five years on from the cowshed days, we are exporting all over the world, have multi award winning whiskies and have done things in t ..read more

The wonderful thing about whiskey, is that it flows through history, connects cultures and is inextricably linked with people and places. My job as a whiskey bonder is to create the most diverse Library of Irish Whiskey Flavours in the world. I do that by sourcing whiskey spirit from distilleries all over Ireland and pairing them with casks from cooperages, distilleries and wineries all over the world. If you follow me on socials at all you’ll see I spend a good chunk of time in Kentucky. That’s because I source first fill casks directly from there and am always on the hunt for flavour. The Fl ..read more

When I started J.J. Corry there were only three distilleries producing whiskey on the Island of Ireland.  Today there are thirty something. As a whiskey bonder my job is to curate a library of whiskey flavours so that as we mature and blend those stocks we have a varied pallet of flavours to draw from over time. This is what differentiates us from a distillery, we have a still to glass approach, and a wide variety of flavours for the end blend. My goal is to have the most diverse collection of Irish Whiskey stocks on the Island eventually.  This work will come to fruition in the comi ..read more

There are two approaches to making Irish Whiskey that have emerged in recent years: Sink 25-50 Million Euros in the Thing at the beginning and hope for the best Sink 500K-5Million Euros in the Thing at the beginning and hope for the best Both have equal chance of failure and success and I’m not advocating one over the other here. I’ve chosen the latter and I am really glad I did, so far anyway…. I looked to the craft distilling movement in the U.S.A. when I founded my business. Most distilleries over there of which there are now thousands,  tend to start small and grow organically and t ..read more

I chose Mexican Fiesta Colours for the Label Right well, there we are then. I’ve just managed to be the first Irish Whiskey Co. to launch an Irish Whiskey incorporating Mezcal and Tequila casks…..I do not think I will be the last….. There are a few reasons for this, first of all, a Mexican family own one of our better known distilleries… and second of all the flavour profile of both these spirits is very hard to resist. Let me be very clear here, this is not a gimmicky ‘look at me’ release. This is something I thought about for a long time based on a desire to marry two flavour profiles that ..read more

A few years ago I wrote an article about sexism in the drinks industry, you can find that here. I called out some insane incidents I’d experienced in my early career, including a work colleague climbing into my hotel room window via a balcony and a CMO in the USA showing up at my hotel room door and banging on it until I called security after a work dinner.  I never said a word as nobody would have listened  I laughed it off and got on with my work because that’s what you did back then. (Sidenote Imagine your 26 year old daughter having to deal with that at work today???) We have qui ..read more

So, you’ve decided to become a billionaire by launching an Irish Whiskey Company, awesome, welcome to the Billionaire club.  Here is some advice from your friends in whiskey many of us who jumped on this particular bandwagon several years ago and are riding it all the way to Money town, just like you…… You can’t get away with lying about a non existent distillery/distiller/ master blender anymore. Hyde screwed the pooch on this one a few years ago, and people actually stand up and take notice now and won’t tolerate it. You need to be open about what you are doing and not obfuscate the tr ..read more

The human side of Covid-19 is very real, I have elderly parents who I’m monitoring closely. This pandemic will result in human tragedy for many. The economic and business repercussions are also very calamitous. As the reality of our current situation evolves and sinks in I figured I’d shine a light on what this means for our particular bourgeoning industry from my perspective. I appreciate that all industries are in the same boat, but for us in Irish Whiskey it’s a unique situation. We have so many new Indie players on the Irish Whiskey scene that this level of global disruption is quite preca ..read more

I’m whizzing along in the back of a taxi at the moment making my way from Seoul airport into town, its miles away apparently so I have time. I flew in this morning on the red-eye from Singapore managed about 3 hours of sleep on the flight, but I’m feeling energised nonetheless. I’m here with several of our fellow Indie whiskey and drinks producers on a trade mission with Bord Bia. The function of these trade missions is to bring Indie producers to potential markets and to assist in making introductions to potential customers and distributors. Its much more powerful traveling in a group, and we ..read more

Our AGM finished up yesterday morning and I waved my Investors off to the airport so they could return to their respective countries of residence. We spent almost 4 days together going over everything J.J. Corry past, present and future. We talked through, overhead, portfolio line up, expansion plans, distribution, marketing, and most importantly FINANCING plans. I am very fortunate to have investor partners who are also now very good friends. We are deadly serious about our business, but we have a very good time along the way (it’s a whiskey business for god’s sake….we better be having fun ..read more