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DIAGEO HAS SECURED the go-ahead for its €25 million plan to construct a new distillery at its St James’s Gate base in Dublin.
The distillery will be used for its new premium blended Irish whiskey, Roe & Co.
The maker of Guinness has also received planning permission for a visitor experience at the new facility at the former Guinness Power House on Thomas Street.
Diageo state that the visitor experience will celebrate the Roe & Co whiskey brand and the revival of craft brewing in Dublin and is aiming to achieve 50,000 visitors a year.
Production on the site is expected to begin in the first half of 2019 – meaning the first whiskey distilled at the site won’t be available for sale until 2022.
Thomas Street
The new whiskey from Diageo – which has been made available at key European sites since March – is named in honour of whiskey maker George Roe, who is credited with bringing about the golden era of Irish whiskey in the 19th century.
Roe’s distillery extended over 17 acres on Thomas Street and was once Ireland’s largest distillery.
The new distillery will have the capacity to produce 500,000 litres each year. The whiskey product is to be matured and bottled off site.
Planning documents lodged on behalf of Diageo state: “We believe that the proposal will bring significant regeneration benefits to the area and the city at large.”
Dublin City Council gave the go-ahead after concluding that the development would provide a sustainable use for a currently disused part of the urban fabric, retaining part of the industrial heritage of the area.
The granting of the application comes against the background of a resurgence in the Irish whiskey sector in recent years where exports have grown by over €215 million over the past decade.
The Head of the Irish Whiskey Association, Miriam Mooney has already stated that the development of the new distillery “is a hugely significant chapter in the evolving Irish whiskey story”.
The sector has grown from just four distilleries in operation in 2013 to 16 in production and a further 13 in planning, with many more at various other stages of planning.
The recently launched Irish Whiskey Tourism Strategy has set out ambitious plans for the sector aiming to treble the number of whiskey tourists to Ireland from 650,000 to 1.9 million by 2025.
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George Roe owned a small distillery where St Patricks tower now is (the pepper pot tower) and was the biggest exporter of whiskey in Europe by 1900. The Roes were so rich they funded the restoration christchurch cathedral.
Decline of the whiskey trade from then on (they survived by selling stored whiskey) led to the Roes selling their 17 acre site to Guinness in 1949.
Its about time a Roe whiskey was launched. Delighted
@Dearbhla Russell: unfortunate that its by diagio though.. the company that wanted ot change the name of Guinness to Diagio and thoug t it would be ok. Like most of their other products it will be full of cost saving chemicals. Best of luck to the smaller distillers, before these monsters try and buy them out
@iMoan Brutal: no they didn’t try to change the name of Guinness. They also haven’t changed any of the ingredients in any of their historic drinks. You are simply lying
@iMoan Brutal:
The vast majority of those smaller distillers are only praying that one of the monsters will try and buy them out!
Wahoo….Drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink…Wahoo
They should move the Guiness factory out to a more derelict site outside the Canals.The tourists will still want to get the bus out to it. Re-develop the area for high density housing & offices, create a new urban quarter.
@Fred Jensen: no
@Fred Jensen: Have you any idea of how much that would cost or how long it would take? It would also destroy the heritage of the product. Leave it where it is.
@Fred Jensen: what a terrible idea. Reflected by 1 like which is probably your own
@Fred Jensen: Yeah good one Fred. Any more jokes?
@Kal Ipers:
It’s what should happen. They would get hundreds of millions from selling the site, and use that to build the new factory. Let’s face it, the tourists only care that it’s located in Ireland.
@Fred Jensen: No It isn’t just the tourists that care I am a Dubliner and I would never drink their products again if they moved. I know some leople who are third and fourth generation working there.
They suggested this before and got a resounding no from the public here.
@Fred Jensen: its not Disney Fred, its a brewery with history and not something purely for entertaining tourists.
@NeilGoochFerriter:
Too many dewy eyed foggy headed misty minded oul romantics here.
Change is good. Could fit thousands of apartments on that site.
@Fred Jensen: Fred, you haven’t a clue for one the hundreds of millions would go to diageo share holders for two it’s one of the stupidest opinions I’ve heard here in a while.
@Fred Jensen: wow. Please don’t ever get involved in city planning or politics. This might be the worst idea I’ve ever heard
@Kal Ipers: It wasn’t so much the public voting it down that stopped the idea, it was DCC stating that they would never allow the site be used for anything other than its current purpose. The plan had been to build a new brewery opposite HP in Leixlip.
@Fred Jensen:
I know its going to be pretty unpopular, and would probably never happen but I have to agree with Fred on this one.
Keep the tourist element but there is no reason for industry to be in a city centre.
@Fred Jensen: diagio recently spend 100s of millions on their new brewhouse close to the liffey on land they own for hundreds if years. Are you having a laugh
@Fred Jensen: they
the Irish whiskey bubble grows further.
@Minom Pnom:
Interesting point, there is a massive expansion going on so you do have to wonder.
@Minom Pnom: the opening of the Chinese market is not a bubble. French winerys have experienced he same surge
@John Owens:
I was aware that’s the Chinese market that is driving it but the same happened to the dairy industry, once the quotas were gone they were told it’s all about the Chinese market. More milk!, more milk! Guess what, the price collapsed.
It’s amazing what you can do with a few million quid..
A gift for the work the shy.
@Morizy: the what?
@Neal Ireland Hello.: too much whiskey already I’d say
The artist’s impression of the distillery (1930s architecture) looks very like the old Harp lager brewery in Dundalk, Co. Louth.
@Paul Jennings: Without the smell lol.
We all love the legal drugs. Slainte!
Roe @ co. That name will go down well in America. Roe v Wade.
Here’s to the day when we see 25m spent on a grow op in Dublin City…
Good time to restore the sails to the smock windmill at St Patrick’s Tower
Much bigger builds going on. Big woop
An interesting turn of events.
Apparently Arthur Guinness (or maybe it was his sone or grandson) hated Roe, who saw him as a nouveau riche upstart.
He once declared:”We make the nurse of the people, they make the curse of the people”
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I for one can’t wait to try some genuine “Diageo International PLC, by appointment to her majesty the Queen’s genuine Irish Whiskey!”
Some irony also that over the years, generations of the Guinness family considered their stout to be the “nurse of the people,” while they considered spirits (e.g., Roe whiskey) to be the “curse of the people.
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The photo reminds me of The Distiller on Haunted Hill, it was full of spirits lol.
The battle of the craft brews now versus the big boys???
The Distillery on Haunted Hill, wireless keyboards… yikes…
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