A husband-and-wife company that began with brands, not stills.

Walsh Whiskey is the Irish company behind two whiskey ranges, The Irishman and Writers’ Tears. It was founded in 1999 by the husband-and-wife team Bernard and Rosemary Walsh, the Moodie Davitt Report reported in November 2021. The same report described The Irishman as the company’s original brand and, at that time, as “a suite of nine single malt-led whiskeys”, with Writers’ Tears a range of eight pot-still-focused whiskeys. Both ranges were then sold in more than 50 countries.

The company’s story up to 2021 — its supply arrangements, the 2013 partnership with the Italian group Illva Saronno, the distillery that partnership built at Royal Oak in Carlow and the 2019 separation that left the Walsh side with the brands and Illva Saronno with the distillery — is told in our Writers’ Tears guide. What matters here is the result: outside those joint-venture years Walsh Whiskey has been a brand owner rather than a distiller, and its identity has had to be built from names, labels and bottles.

Amber Beverage Group has owned Walsh Whiskey since November 2021. The Moodie Davitt Report described the buyer as a producer and distributor headquartered in Luxembourg, with the Baltic states as its historical home, and said the deal was the group’s first move into Irish whiskey. Bernard Walsh, the report said, would continue as managing director, overseeing the development and production of the whiskeys.

A tall bottle, an “I” in barrel staves and a line of braille.

The main design project on The Irishman has been its 2022 rebrand. Walsh Whiskey announced it in February 2022, the Moodie Davitt Report reported, after a strategic review that began in April 2020. The insight work was done with The Thinking House, the insight centre of the Irish food board Bord Bia, and the design by HERE, a London design agency; Drinks International reported the same partnership in March 2022.

The bottle changed most. The Moodie Davitt Report described a new tall, tapered bottle with broad shoulders and a tapered base, with phrases embossed around its lower section, and a cork closure across every expression. A new brand icon was introduced: a capital “I”, for Irishman, set inside two-tone barrel staves. The labels of the six core expressions were given a colour palette of cream, green, grey, blue and burgundy.

One detail is personal. The bottles carry the brand name in braille, which both Drinks International and the Moodie Davitt Report described as Bernard Walsh’s tribute to his grandfather, Jack Walsh, who lost his sight. Nutritional information moved to e-labels on the back of the pack and online. The rollout began in Ireland on 3 February 2022, with Europe and Canada following from April, the United States in the summer and other markets later that year.

The rebrand also tidied the range. The blend previously sold as Founder’s Reserve, described in the release as 70 percent single malt and 30 percent pot still, was renamed The Harvest, and the Caribbean Cask, first issued as a limited edition in 2018 and finished in rum casks from Saint Lucia, joined the core range. The six core expressions were The Harvest, Single Malt, 12 Year Old and 17 Year Old Single Malts, Vintage Cask and Caribbean Cask Finish. “The Irishman will always be single malt focused,” Bernard Walsh said, and the company said the whiskey would always be triple distilled.

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 planned home in Carlow, and a planning refusal.

Under its new owner the company set out to become a distiller again. In October 2023 Amber Beverage Group announced plans for a distillery at Dunleckney, County Carlow, Whisky Magazine reported, on a seven-acre riverside site that began in the eighteenth century as a corn mill, later became a brewery and was converted to malthouses in the 1860s. The distillery was to focus on single malt and pot still whiskey made in copper pot stills and to become a permanent home for The Irishman and Writers’ Tears. At the time the company hoped to begin building in late 2024 and to open in 2026, subject to planning.

Planning did not go through at the first attempt. Just Drinks reported in April 2025 that Carlow County Council had refused permission on 20 March 2025, citing concerns over water supply from a private borehole, connections to the public water and wastewater network, and the assessment of possible effects on the River Barrow and River Nore Special Area of Conservation. John Griffin, chief executive of Walsh Whiskey, told the publication the company was disappointed, considered the concerns “not insurmountable” and intended to address them and resubmit its application.

Cask experiments have shaped The Irishman’s range. Bernard Walsh told Drinks International in 2022 that the brand had worked with Florio Marsala, Oloroso sherry, Caribbean rum and Irish peated red ale casks, and that it respected Ireland’s distilling heritage while experimenting with woods, finishes and cereal varieties.

For a design guide, Walsh Whiskey shows how a company without a distillery of its own can give each of its ranges a distinct identity — a teardrop and chapter numbers for one, a tall bottle, a stave-framed “I” and a line of braille for the other. Compare Writers’ Tears, the company’s pot still range, and Teeling, the Dublin whiskey family brand. For this guide we use green, burgundy and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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