SquaresRenew 21: Bushmills Distillery

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Bushmills Distillery

One of the reasons for choosing Bushmills as a place to stay was that we could visit the world-famous distillery on foot and both enjoy a dram at the end.

Bushmills claims to be the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery. Official records stretch back to 1608, when the area was granted its license to distil. Over the ensuing four centuries it has, of course, renewed and restructured many times. For example the distillery was destroyed by fire in 1885, but soon rebuilt and got back into full production to meet soaring US demand. When that demand failed because of Prohibition in the 1920s many distilleries went under, but Bushmills gambled on this being a passing phase, and on the repeal of Prohibition reportedly set sail for Chicago with the biggest shipment of whiskey ever to leave an Irish port. Today it continues to expand – its US owners, Proximo Spirits, have opened a new £37 million distillery adjacent to the original site to boost production capacity.

Painted barrels in visitor centre
Single malt barrels
3 types of barrel
More barrels

No photographs were allowed during the tour, which was excellent, but here we are enjoying our drams. And for those wondering about the spelling, in Scotland we have whisky but in Ireland they have whiskey.

Enjoying a dram
Enjoying a dram

Part of Becky’s SquaresRenew Challenge, using images from our April 2024 trip to Northern Ireland to illustrate one or more of the following:

  • Move forward
  • Reconstruct
  • Renew
  • Burgeoning
Northern Ireland, UK , ,

39 Comments »

  1. Pingback: Bushmills Heritage Trail – The Glasgow Gallivanter

  9. Aha, this was the first thing I thought of when I saw you were staying in Bushmills! I’m glad you got to do the tour without having to drive, it would have been a shame to have to miss out on those drams 😆

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  10. Love the photos, Anabel, esp. the stained glass (my dad made stained glass figurines). Looks like you had great weather.

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  11. An attractive looking place Anabel, though maybe not so much on a grey rainy day. I like the colourful picture and the puffin on the barrel, interesting info too on the spelling of whisky – you can have my share though, I don’t even like the smell of it.

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  13. Always good to stay in a place where you don’t have to drive to get back to your bed. I always used to think whiskey with an e was a dog name! Until I was old enough to enjoy Irish whiskey (in coffee that is, I’m not a whiskey or whisky drinker). The OH is fond of a single malt.

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  14. huh I never knew that about the spelling – what do the English and Welsh do?! Glad you enjoyed the tour and the odd dram, and what amazing blue skies you had. More than made up for the rainy days before

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