How's everyone keeping out there in the whiskey world? I hope you all had an amazing New Year which was spent with friends, family and your favourite dram.
Yet another late night blog update but there's a method to my madness. I'm sitting here typing away furiously in the hope I have a whiskey exclusive.
It appears that the "Dunville's Irish Whiskey" brand is back on our shelves after maybe 60 odd years.
Whilst perusing the whiskey cabinet at my favourite Belfast off sales my attention was drawn to a bottle of Dunville's Very Rare Irish Whiskey which was sitting neatly on the top shelf priced at £29.99. Now whilst most people would faint at the thought of such a bargain (original bottles can go for anything up to £1000) my eager eyes also noted that the label and seal on the bottle were most definitely brand spanking new.
Upon asking an employee to open the cabinet, to allow me to examine further, he promptly went behind the main counter of the store and picked up one of three other bottles that happened to be sitting there..not such the exclusive I thought I was on to. Nonetheless my interest had been roused and my primary goal was now not to nab what I thought was an utter bargain but to work out what exactly I was looking at.
Examination of the label on the back revealed a little bit of the mystery. Smack bang in the middle were the words Echlinville Distillery.
Now, what or where is Echlinville Distillery, I hear you ask.
Around the start of June 2013 a distillers licence was granted to Echlinville Distillery, which is situated on the Echlinville estate in the small town of Kircubbin, County Down, Northern Ireland, and with this it becomes the first distillery to receive a licence in Northern Ireland for over 125 years.
Around the same time a planning application was approved for a state-of-the-art distillery complex complete with visitors’ centre, restaurant, bar, distillation hall, maturing warehousing and museum. At the moment it would seem that they have 1 still already in operation and have also filled their first barrels. Plans are afoot to further increase the operation by adding an extra 2 stills by September this year and hopefully the visitors' centre should be open in a couple of years time.
The driving force behind this venture is a man by the name of Shane Braniff, a businessman from the local area, who is also responsible for bringing you the Feckin' Irish Whiskey brand.
Now that I hopefully have covered a bit about Echlinville I shall return to the whiskey.
Unfortunately not much else was shown on the label apart from the statement that it was produced in Northern Ireland and has been bottled at 40% ABV. Without tasting the whiskey it looks like it's a very basic blend with, no doubt, some colour added, but as to the contents I have no idea. I shall guess however that, since Feckin' Irish Whiskey comes from the Cooley Distillery then this, possibly, could also could be from a batch from Cooley sold prior to Beam Global taking over.
I have already set about finding out more info for you all and intend to buy a bottle ASAP to return my opinion on what the contents are like.
Whilst waiting for the further updates I've added a few images and linked up the Feckin' web page and Facebook page for further reading. These can be found at the bottom of this post.
Until next time,
Slainte.
SI
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| Location of Kircubbin which is found by travelling east from Belfast, through Newtownards and then south east on the other side of Greyabbey. |
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| Echlinville estate. |
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