Bushmills Distillery

The Old Bush­mills Dis­tillery was founded in 1608 and is now owned by the major drinks com­pany Dia­geo. Bush­mills whiskey is pro­duced, matured, and bot­tled on-site at the Bush­mills Dis­tillery in Bush­mills, County Antrim, North­ern Ire­land. The dis­tillery is a tourist attrac­tion, with around 110,000 vis­i­tors per year.

Despite a lack of his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, it is believed that troops of King Henry II drank Bush­mills some 400 years before the dis­tillery became offi­cially licensed in 1608 by King James I. In 1784 the Bush­mills Dis­tillery became an offi­cially reg­is­tered com­pany. From 1740 to 1910 Irish emi­grants to the USA spread the word of Bush­mills, as did the product’s wins in inter­na­tional spirit and whiskey competitions.

In the early 1900s, the USA was a very impor­tant mar­ket for Bush­mills (and other Irish Whiskey pro­duc­ers). Pro­hi­bi­tion in 1920 came as a large blow to the Irish Whiskey indus­try, but Bush­mills man­aged to sur­vive. Wil­son Boyd, Bushmill’s direc­tor at the time, pre­dicted the end of pro­hi­bi­tion and had large stores of whiskey ready to export. After the Sec­ond World War, the dis­tillery was bought by Isaac Wolf­son, and, in 1972, it was taken over by Irish Dis­tillers, mean­ing that Irish Dis­tillers con­trolled the pro­duc­tion of all Irish whiskey at the time. In June 1988, Irish Dis­tillers was bought by French liquor group Pernod Ricard.

In June 2005, the dis­tillery was bought by Dia­geo for £200 mil­lion. Dia­geo has sig­nif­i­cantly increased pro­duc­tion at the dis­tillery and hopes to dou­ble pro­duc­tion by 2011. This is in con­trast to the seri­ous neglect that the brand suf­fered dur­ing its time under Irish Dis­tillers, dur­ing which the whiskey stocks at Bush­mills were severely decreased in order to increase the mar­ket share of Jame­son Whiskey, which is Irish Dis­tillers’ main brand. Dia­geo have also announced a large adver­tis­ing cam­paign in order to regain a mar­ket share for Bushmills.

In May 2008, the Bank of Ire­land issued a new series of ster­ling ban­knotes in North­ern Ire­land which all fea­ture an illus­tra­tion of the Old Bush­mills Dis­tillery on the obverse side, replac­ing the pre­vi­ous notes series which depicted Queen’s Uni­ver­sity of Belfast.