The Cooneys, the Gleeson Group and a second start on the river.

Boann Distillery is the business of the Cooney family. The company says it is an independent, family-run distillery founded by Patrick and Marie Cooney and their family, and The Irish Times reported in September 2015 that Pat Cooney, his wife and four of their children were actively involved in running it. The family came to distilling from the wider drinks trade: the same report said Pat Cooney had built the Gleeson Group into a major manufacturer and wholesaler of drinks before it was sold to C&C in 2012.

The project was announced as a distillery and a brewery under one roof. The Irish Times described plans for the Boann Distillery and Boyne Brewhouse at Drogheda, with a whiskey distillery, a craft brewery, a taproom and a visitor centre, and reported that beer production was already under way in 2015. It named John McDougall as consultant distiller and Áine O’Hora as head distiller and brewer, and said the plans covered whiskey, gin and a range of craft beers.

The location needs a little care. The Irish Times placed the project in Drogheda, Co Louth, in 2015. The company gives its address as Lagavooren, on the Platin Road outside Drogheda, in Co Meath, and says the distillery stands on the banks of the River Boyne; the Meath Chronicle described it in 2022 as just outside Drogheda, Co Meath. The name belongs to the river too: in Irish mythology Boann is the goddess of the Boyne, English Wikipedia notes.

Distilling in Drogheda had a long gap. The Irish Times noted in 2015 that the town once had eighteen distilleries, and the Meath Chronicle reported that the last of them stopped distilling in the late 1850s. The paper reported that the first spirit flowed from Boann’s copper pot stills in late 2019, and that on 21 December 2019 nine hand-selected casks were filled from the first distillation, with finishes that included Pedro Ximénez, Armagnac, Sauternes and Marsala.

The Whistler first, then a single pot still of its own.

The first whiskey to carry the family to market was The Whistler. Drinks Industry Ireland reported in January 2017 that Boann unveiled the range at Whiskey Live in Dublin Castle: a seven-year-old single malt called The Blue Note, a ten-year-old called How The Years Whistle By and a cask-strength seven-year-old, aged in bourbon barrels and finished in Oloroso sherry casks and bottled at natural colour without chill filtration. The report named the parent company as Na Cuana and quoted Peter Cooney, its export sales director. The Whistler went on sale in January 2017; Boann’s own stills first ran in late 2019. The company says the Whistler range is named after Pat Cooney.

The distillery’s own spirit arrived under the Boann name. On 21 December 2022, the winter solstice, the company unveiled its first Irish single pot still whiskey, named Solstice and drawn from a Pedro Ximénez hogshead, the Meath Chronicle reported. The paper described the bottle: three wax-sealed staves stand for three years of maturation, and the design reflects the copper pot still, the sun and the moon.

The solstice became a fixed date in the calendar. ThinkBusiness reported in June 2024 that three Boann Single Pot Still expressions, finished in Marsala, Madeira and Pedro Ximénez casks and bottled at 47% with natural colour, would launch on 21 June to coincide with the summer solstice. Shelflife reported in June 2026 that a new core expression, Boann Legacy, made from malted and unmalted barley, oats and rye, would be the centrepiece of the distillery’s annual Summer Solstice event, and that its packaging was inspired by the copper pot stills, tracing copper as it ages from bright polish to a green verdigris patina.

Gin sits alongside the whiskey. The company lists Silks Irish Dry Gin, which it says is distilled in a 500-litre custom copper pot still, and Copper Cloud Irish Dry Gin among its brands.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all names from the newer generation of distilleries on the island of Ireland: Dingle, Waterford, Glendalough, West Cork, Pearse Lyons, Boann and Echlinville. Distillery brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family-run sites that still carry a founder’s name or a farm’s fields to labels that belong to larger drinks groups, and a single name can cover a whiskey, a gin, a vodka or a poitín.

A young distillery’s identity is often carried less by its own aged spirit than by a place, a story and a label, because whiskey takes years in the cask before it can be sold as whiskey, and some distilleries sell gin, bought-in whiskey or spirit they have finished themselves while their own stock matures. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually distilled, matured and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family business, a sold beer range and a solstice habit.

The brewing half of the original plan changed shape. Checkout reported on 11 August 2020 that the Carlow Brewing Company, owner of O’Hara’s, had acquired a range of beers and pre-mixed canned spirits from the Boyne Brewhouse, to be sold under the Glassbox brand, with production moving from Drogheda to Co Carlow.

The distillery itself has stayed with the family. ThinkBusiness described Boann in June 2024 as a family-owned business based in Meath, with Pat Cooney as managing director and founder; Shelflife named him co-founder and managing director in June 2026, and quoted him on the Legacy launch. The Meath Chronicle reported in 2022 that the family is based in Kilmessan, Co Meath. Shelflife presented Boann Legacy as a tribute to the Cooney family’s five decades in the drinks industry.

Two names share the business: Boann, on the distillery and its single pot still whiskeys, and The Whistler, a separate range from the same family company.

For a design guide, Boann shows how a river goddess, a solstice date and the colours of an ageing copper still can carry a young distillery’s labels, alongside its Boyne Valley neighbour Slane and Dublin’s Teeling. For this guide we use pot-still copper, verdigris and Boyne green with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Boann Distillery’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.