Kilbeggan Distillery

Matthias McManus established Kilbeggan Distillery in County Westmeath in 1757. When fire struck in 1878, local people broke open the warehouses and rolled thousands of casks into the street, saving both the whiskey and much of the distillery. Production stopped in 1953; a local preservation association took charge in 1982 and restored the waterwheel the following year.

Distilling returned in 2007 using traditional methods and antique copper stills, followed in 2010 by equipment that restored grain-to-cask production under one roof for selected whiskeys. Kilbeggan Single Pot Still draws on late-nineteenth-century recipes and is distilled twice from a mash of malted barley, raw barley and a small measure of oats.