Lockes Distillery Kilbeggan

Lockes Distillery is one of my all time favourite places especially now that Kilbeggan has been bypassed! But please do not let that put you off as it is well worth a little detour off the M6 Dublin to Galway motorway, on to the quiet little ‘back road’ that used to be the main thoroughfare to Dublin! This is the genuine article, reputedly the oldest licensed distillery in the world. If you could bottle tradition? this is what it would taste like! There is a delicious smell in the air, a heady concoction of uisce beatha which is Irish for whiskey or the water of life and love....
Crossing the threshold is like stepping back in time as the buildings and machinery are mostly all the original. What led to the distillerys decline in the first place ie not being modernised may now have been its saving grace. It is certainly winning tourism awards all around, having been lovingly restored by a local initiative which began in 1982. Which no doubt explains why the staff here are so nice and friendly, either that or as they say in Ireland there is something in the water. The clear sparkling water of the Brosna river turns the wooden water wheel outside, which powers the restored machinery inside....

Lockes Distillery, Kilbeggan, County Westmeath

Each part of the distilling process is explained on a walk through the Lockes Distillery Museum which includes the stills, watermill, cooperage and casking. In 2007 fifty years after it closed the Lockes Distillery went into production again following the same tried and trusted production procedures that had not been used since 1757. The tour finishes up with a very convivial tasting in the whiskey bar, one of the nicest in Ireland, and a very popular stop off on journeys West once upon a time, with my father, God rest him. It is a treasure trove of 18 year old malts, including the Greenore single grain and Connemara 12 year old peated variety. As well as the more unusual Fortnum Madeira whiskeys that have been aged in sherry casks, that are only available in the Kilbeggan and the Celtic Store on Dawson Street in Dublin. There is a gift shop of course, which sells an excellent whiskey fruit cake, in case you are driving? And a small restaurant which I hope, still boasts a whiskey laced bread and butter pudding, yummy....

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