16-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Dublin Liberties Distillery to close next week
Quintessential Brands has been asked for comment.
Staff at the visitor centre confirmed that the venue will close permanently from next week and that no more bookings are being accepted.
Liberties is just the latest Irish distillery venture to either close or retrench, following a more than decade-long renaissance of the sector.
In 2016, Quintessential Brands bought Dublin Whiskey Company and said it would spend €10m to build a new distillery in the capital, as well as a visitors' centre. Dublin Whiskey Company had been founded in 2012.
It was renamed as The Dublin Liberties Whiskey Distillery. In 2017, Quintessential Brands announced that a total of €28m would be invested in the distillery and its whiskey brands, including The Dubliner and Dublin Liberties.
At the time it agreed an €18.3m investment by Stock Spirits Group in return for a 25pc equity interest in Quintessential Brands Irish Whiskey Limited (QBIW), which owns the two whiskey brands.
The investment by Stock Spirits included an initial €15m in cash plus a further deferred cash consideration over a five-year period. QBIW used the investment to complete the construction and fit-out of the Dublin Liberties Distillery on Mill Street in Dublin and to accelerate advertising and promotional investment in the brands underpinned by significant investment in stock maturation.
In 2022, Dublin Liberties Distillery and the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers signed a three-year sponsorship agreement, naming the distillery a partner of the team.
Quintessential Brands also owns a slew of other drinks including Greenall's Gin, Dead Rabbit Irish Whiskey, and O'Mara's Country Cream. It also owns First Ireland Spirits, which is the largest independent producer of Irish cream liqueur and Irish country creams in Ireland, with a manufacturing facility in Abbeyleix, Co Laois.
The company was founded in 2011 by Enzo Visone, the former chief executive of Campari, and entrepreneur Warren Scott.
The latest set of accounts for Quintessential Brands Ireland Holdings show that the unit generated revenue of €22.6m in the 12 months to the end of March last year, and made a €6.6m pre-tax loss.
That compared to revenue of €31.5m the year before, when it made a €1m pre-tax loss.
A number of distillers and craft brewers in Ireland have come under pressure in the past year. Last month the Scottish firm William Grant & Sons confirmed that whiskey production at its Tullamore Distillery, which produces Tullamore DEW, would cease for up to three months due to challenging international trading conditions.
Irish Distillers owner Pernod Ricard paused whiskey production at Midleton in Co Cork last month for up to three months.
