A Belfast businessman’s distillery on a County Down estate.

Hinch Distillery is a whiskey and gin distillery on the Killaney Estate, just outside Ballynahinch in County Down, Northern Ireland. Its founder and chairman is Dr Terry Cross OBE, a Belfast businessman who, The Irish News reported in November 2021, founded the packaging company Delta Print & Packaging in 1981. In December 2019 the same paper reported that Cross had sold Delta to the Finnish packaging group Huhtamaki in 2016, and that he had also invested in a Bordeaux wine estate, Château de la Ligne; The Spirits Business reported in November 2019 that he had bought and restored the château in 2000.

The company dates itself to 2016. “Our story officially began in 2016,” its website says, and The Irish News gave the same year when the distillery opened. The name is local. The distillery says it took “Hinch” from its nearest town, Ballynahinch, a name it glosses as “Town of the Island” in Irish, and The Spirits Business reported in 2019 that the building was named after the town and built with local materials and tradespeople.

The project was made public in November 2019. Hospitality Ireland reported that Cross was backing a new whiskey and gin distillery on the grounds of the Killaney Lodge country estate, near Carryduff, with a visitor centre, a restaurant and an event space planned alongside it. The Spirits Business described a two-floor building of about 30,000 square feet between Belfast and Ballynahinch, housing production, a bottling line, storage and offices, and said it was due to open in 2020. The following month The Irish News reported that the Cork drinks distributor Barry and Fitzwilliam would handle Hinch’s products in the Republic of Ireland.

The Time Collection first, its own single malts later.

The brand reached the market before the distillery opened its doors. In December 2019 The Irish News reported that the company’s gin, Ninth Wave Irish Gin, was already on sale, alongside a series of Hinch whiskeys. In November 2020 the American trade site Beverage Business listed the Hinch Time Collection — a Small Batch Bourbon Cask, a 5 Year Old Double Wood and a 10 Year Old Sherry Cask — and described the whiskeys as made at the distillery on the Killaney Estate, south of Belfast.

The pandemic delayed the public opening. On 1 April 2021 The Irish News reported that the economy minister Diane Dodds had formally opened the distillery and its adjoining visitor centre, a project backed by Invest NI, and quoted Cross saying the company hoped to make its mark on Northern Ireland’s tourism map and on the global drinks industry. The Belfast Media papers reported the April 2021 opening later the same month.

Whiskey made entirely from the distillery’s own spirit came later. In May 2025 the Horse and Field newsletter reported the launch of Hinch Single Malt and Hinch Peated Single Malt, which it described as the first Hinch whiskeys made wholly from spirit distilled on the site. It said the stills were first turned on in 2020, that the two whiskeys were unveiled at the Balmoral Show and shown at Whiskey Live Dublin on 16 and 17 May 2025, and it quoted Cross, as chairman, calling the release “a defining moment.”

Today the company sorts its whiskeys into a core range, which includes the Small Batch Bourbon Cask, a Peated Small Batch and the two single malts; limited editions; and a Warehouse 3 Collection, named after the warehouse where, the company says, the components of all its whiskeys mature. It says it uses “both double and triple distillation,” calls its Single Malt “triple-distilled,” and says that milling, mashing, distillation and bottling all happen “under one roof,” and that “every bottle of Hinch is conceived, matured and bottled on site.” We give those as the company’s statements.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Irish distilleries: Killowen, Great Northern, Lough Gill, Clonakilty, Walsh Whiskey, Blackwater and Hinch. They are spread across the island rather than gathered in one district — Killowen in the Mourne Mountains and Hinch near Ballynahinch, both in County Down; Great Northern in Dundalk, County Louth, on the site of the former Harp brewery; Lough Gill in County Sligo; Clonakilty in west Cork; and Blackwater at Ballyduff in County Waterford.

Irish whiskey is a protected geographical indication. English Wikipedia notes that, under the rules set out in the 2014 technical file for Irish whiskey and checked by the Irish revenue authorities from January 2016, it must be matured for at least three years in wooden casks, and it recognises four styles: single pot still, single malt, single grain and blended. The word “single” may be used only when a whiskey is wholly distilled at one distillery.

The modern industry was rebuilt from very few distilleries. English Wikipedia records that Jameson, Powers and the Cork Distilleries Company merged as Irish Distillers in 1966, that Bushmills joined in 1972, and that Cooley Distillery was established by John Teeling in 1987; Great Northern, which Hospitality Ireland reported in August 2015 had begun distilling, was co-founded by him.

Ownership varies, and some of these names now sit inside larger drinks groups: BeverageDaily reported in November 2021 that Amber Beverage Group had acquired Walsh Whiskey, and in June 2022 that the Sazerac Company was buying Lough Gill Distillery, which Sazerac renamed Hawk’s Rock in 2025.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now, and where its whiskey is actually distilled, matured and bottled — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A distillery built as a destination.

Much of Hinch’s identity is the place itself. The Spirits Business reported in November 2019 that the distillery was designed by Drinksology, the firm behind the interiors of The Dead Rabbit and BlackTail bars in New York, and that the visitor centre was planned to include a coffee shop, a restaurant, a pub, a courtyard, event spaces and a shop, with tours, tutored tastings and a gin experience. Today the company’s website also presents a Hinch Brasserie, a wedding venue on the estate called The Killaney, and what it calls the Legacy Cask Programme, through which buyers can own a cask.

Its product names lean on Irish story and on the craft of maturation rather than on a founder’s name. The company says Ninth Wave Irish Gin is “rooted in a profound appreciation for Irish Mythology” and draws on the idea of the “Otherworld,” and it gives the gin the line “Fresh. Fearless. Full of flavour.” The whiskey names — the Time Collection and the Warehouse 3 Collection — refer to age and to a warehouse, while the brand name itself comes from the nearby town.

The name needs a little care online: Hinch is also a surname and a word used by unrelated businesses, and the distillery’s own site is hinchdistillery.com.

For a design guide, Hinch Distillery shows how a new distillery can take its name from a town and build its identity around an estate and a visitor experience as much as around a bottle. Compare Echlinville, the farm distillery on County Down’s Ards Peninsula, and Killowen, a small distillery in the Mourne Mountains of the same county. For this guide we use Killaney green and still copper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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