Powerscourt Distillery

Drew H (00:08):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore's Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of Experiencing Irish Whiskey and experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. Today we are going to be experiencing Irish whiskey. I'm making my return to the Emerald aisle to introduce you to a couple of distilleries that, well, one of them I've actually been to before I was there during my research for the experiencing Irish whiskey book. And then the other distillery that we'll visit coming up in a couple of days is a distillery that I saw when it was still under construction. And so we're going to learn about what is going on with that distillery now, and they are on either side of the island. So the first one we're going to go to is actually south of Dublin. It's about a 50 minute drive from the airport, and the distillery is actually on an estate.

(01:07):
I've heard a lot of distilleries talking about creating destination experiences. Well, the Powers Court distillery has already got that settled the Power Corps estate. We're going to learn all about that. We'll learn about their whiskey called for Cullen, and I'm really excited about introducing you to this particular distillery. I think they've done an excellent job of converting the estate's historic mill into an impressive production facility, and they've also made sure to emphasize some of the history of the surrounding mountains. So we'll get into some of that during our conversation with our host, John Cashman, the head of brand for Powers Court. And as we make our way up the hill to the estate, let's take a moment to learn a little bit more about what this area has to offer beyond the distillery spanning over a hundred square kilometers. The Wicklow Mountains National Park is one of Ireland's most stunning and diverse natural attractions.

(02:09):
Its rugged terrain features rolling hills, deep glacial valleys and serene lakes offering a breathtaking backdrop for all kinds of outdoor activities. Now, for the adventurous, the park offers a variety of hiking trails. Whether you prefer leisurely strolls or challenging climbs, the Wicklow Mountains will have something to fulfill your desires. The Wicklow Way is a long distance trail, taking hikers through the heart of the park, revealing breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside. And one of the highlights is the SP Trail, a 9.5 kilometer hike that leads past the old miners village up Heather Fleck Hills, and along a mountain ridge that features spectacular views of a glacial lake. Below the enthusiast will find the park teeming with life from deer and badgers to a variety of bird species. It's a paradise for birdwatching photography or simply enjoying the tranquility of nature and history. Lovers can enjoy the views of several ancient monastic sites that dot the landscape like the famous Glen Delow, founded in the sixth century by St. Kevin Glen Delow features ruins of a monastic city, including an iconic round tower churches and stone crosses. And if you're short on time, one of the best ways to experience the Wicklow Mountains is on the Sally Gap Drive one of the most scenic drives in Ireland. This route takes you along the military road that dates back to the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Today it's a place of wild beauty, winding roads, and sweeping views. It's the perfect place to start any Irish distillery adventure.

(04:04):
Well, it's hard not to gawk at the scenery as you're passing by such a beautiful estate and plenty of parking up here. That's one thing you're definitely not going to have to worry about. Now, when I visited this distillery a couple years ago, I didn't get a chance to meet the distiller, but I do know the distiller that works here now. His name is Paul Corbet. He once distilled for Teling, and when I met him, he was distilling for a CLO Kte distillery. And in fact, during that trip I heard a rumor that he might be heading over to Powers Court. And so that is where he is at right now. The distillery is definitely in good hands, but Paul is not the person we're going to be meeting with. Our host is Power Court distilleries, head of brand John Cashman. John himself is an industry veteran. He has a good sense of the history of this modern Irish whiskey revival because he's been a part of it and he's also got a good sense of the history of this estate. So I wanted to start off our conversation by asking him to introduce you to the Estate's storied history.

John (05:10):
Powercor estate is one of the largest country estates on the East coast of Ireland. It's probably without a shadow of a doubt, it's the most famous due to a number of reasons, but it's history dates back to the year 808. That is when we see in the annal and the first ever written references to Cullum, which is our whiskey brand. And Cullum is the Anglicize or the English version of an old Irish word called Ferra Lan. And Fer Lan translates as Men of the mountains. Rah is from the Irish word for men, which is an kulon, is the name of the mountain, which is the symbol on all of our whiskey in the modern world. It's called the Sugarloaf Mountain. But in the old ancient Gaelic times, it was known as Oklan. So Farrah Klan literally translates as the men of the Wicklow Mountains. This region was all of sort of North county Wicklow, south county Dublin, and it was a large tract of land, and it went through many different ownerships over the years in the years of the clans.

(06:24):
So the O' Burns and the O'Tooles were the two warring factions here in county Wicklow. And over all the centuries, they fought over this tract of land called Farlan. Then when the Normans invaded Ireland, and in the year 1306, a Norman called Tis Lapper took over the area and he built a castle on the site of where we now have the power court house, the big old country house. The lappers owned the area until the time of King Henry vii and King Henry VIII took over the lands and he granted it back to one of the original C clams, the O'Tooles. So the O'Tooles had it again for only about 20 years until the time of Henry's daughter, queen Elizabeth I, who there were what we call plantations in Ireland where people were brought over from the English and put into lands in Ireland. And it was granted to the Wingfield family in the year 1603. And the Wingfield built the modern house as it is today, and the Winfields owned the estate all the way up until the 20th century. They're the ones who put in the amazing gardens, which was voted the third most beautiful gardens in the world.

(07:42):
And they sold the estate in the year 1961 to the Zener family. Zener took it over, and it's today in the ownership of the Zener. So power scored estate today, it's a beautiful piece of land with a country house, beautiful old house, as I said, gardens that are the third most beautiful gardens in the world as according to National Geographic Magazine. We have two championship golf courses. We have a five star hotel, and we have a distillery also on the estate. We have Ireland's highest waterfall and Ireland's second highest tree. They thought it was the tallest tree in Ireland for a long period of time, but they just had mismeasured it. And they realized only recently, it's not quite the tallest tree in Ireland, it's number two. But that's the brief history of the estate. Anyway,

Drew H (08:30):
Yeah, it's a beautiful place to walk around. And I think when I was out there, you call this a house and I look at it and to me the word mansion probably fits a bit better and it actually feels very much like it has a very French feel to it in that it is this long, halfway down, there's a pond lake at the bottom, and then you have the beautiful view of the Sugarloaf Mountains beyond that. And there's so much other stuff that you can really explore just on the estate itself.

John (09:08):
Yeah, oh, definitely. I mean, the estate attracts nearly half a million people a year, A lot of day trippers coming out from Dublin just to picnic, to walk through the gardens, go to the waterfall, or the golfers coming to play golf. So it is a beautiful, beautiful spot. And when you say French, it's actually the gardens, the design of the gardens were a typical Italian gardens of the 19th century. So they're actually called the Italian. It's called the Italian Garden, and it's a terrorist garden. And it took something like close to 10 years or maybe more, I can't remember exactly how long it took to build, but it was all done by hand. Obviously there was no excavators back in those days. And soon after it was completed, the concept of Italian gardens and formal gardens actually went out of favor. So it almost went into overgrowth for a period of time, but thankfully they were able to reclaim it. And it is without a shadow of a doubt, one of Ireland's finest, if not Ireland's finest garden

Drew H (10:05):
And the beautiful Japanese garden down there and the pet cemetery, which is fun at

John (10:09):
Cemetery. Well remembered bringing a little bit of creepiness into it.

Drew H (10:13):
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's fun to read the tombstones and see all the,

John (10:18):
It's one of the things when you think about, and you look at it, things don't change. A hundred years ago, 200 years ago, you have the pet dogs, pet cats. They were equally loved as they are for people today.

Drew H (10:29):
So the distillery is in a very interesting building that has kind of its own bit of history. Talk about that history.

John (10:37):
Yeah. Well, the distillery was built in, or it's attached to the oldest building on the entire estate. And that was the millhouse, the millhouse dates from the 17 hundreds. And the Millhouse would've been the center of all activity on the estate because it was where all the estate is essentially a working farm, and it still is to this day. Well, it's a lot more than just a working farm to this day, of course. But all the parley into cereals back in the old times would've been brought to the millhouse to be ground down into flour in latter years. The turn of the 19th century, so 18 hundreds turning into the 20th century, sorry, it had changed hands and it wasn't milling grain anymore. It turned into a sawmill. And so all the wood on the estate would've would've been cut down to manageable pieces here on the estate in the millhouse.

(11:27):
So it was seen as the logical place to build a distillery. And when they were renovating the building, they discovered an old water turbine that had laid undiscovered for about 50, 60 years. It was hidden underneath or within the foundations of the building where an old stream would've passed by to power up the turbine in order to power the sawmill. Fortunately, they were able to make out a little name on it on the engineers that it built. It still were in existence up in Belfast, so they were able to supply us with the original receipt and an original diagram of the turbine itself. So fascinating. As you walk into the modern distillery, you walk through this old building, you see those walls that are almost 300 years old, solid granite. And what I love to look at when you're in the building is over the different generations and centuries, how the building has changed. So you see where maybe there was a window and it has been boarded up or where there was a doorway and it has, the doorway is now off the ground and all these different things, so you can see the different generations putting their little slant onto the building. And we've done the same with having a distillery attached to it.

Drew H (12:34):
When I walked in there and was hearing a bit about the history and looked down, you actually can see part of that old mill in the floor.

John (12:44):
Yeah, we put a sort of glass floor in place so people can walk over it and look down into it, and we're exploring the possibility of there's a basement beside it, and we're exploring the possibility of maybe reclaiming that part of the building and making it somewhere forward to hold some casks for our Uber premium cask estate program of people who've bought single casks from us. And this might be an area where we can showcase them or do really, really intimate tasting. So that's work in progress.

Drew H (13:14):
And when you guys got started, first of all, how did the distillery idea come about? It's good to know, maybe kind of the personality of the whiskey that you were initially looking to create and how you went about trying to reach that high quality of whiskey.

John (13:31):
Yeah, so the initial concept of distillery came about with two local families who had the idea to come up with a distillery. You got to remember Ireland post 2012 was people were thinking about whiskey in a different light because John Keeling had only recently sold Cooley Distillery to Beam as it was then Beam Global. And it was a good news story. It was a big money transaction at a time when there was a really economic turndown in Ireland. And as John Keeling used to always say, Irish whiskey, all you need is Irish, barley, yeast, Irish water and time. That's it. So a lot of people saw this and went, wow, whiskey distilling is something we can really, really do in Ireland. And people who knew the history knew how Irish whiskey had dominated the world back in the 18 hundreds and the 19th century and how it died away.

(14:17):
And you saw the popularity reemerging of Irish whiskey, especially with the growth of jemison around the world and the success of that particular brand. So people's appetite was there for Irish whiskey, and two local families had the idea. They approached a Slazenger family who said, yeah, actually we could see a location for distillery on our estate. And then the another family, the Pierce family, another Irish family who were heavily involved with the Isle of Aaron Distillery, they got involved. So they brought their whiskey knowledge and how to establish a distillery, but then they needed somebody to make it. And they approached no Sweeney, who was the master distiller and blender for the Cooley distillery, and Noel joined the board and came on as our first master distiller and master blender. So once Noel came on board, then you kind of knew the style of whiskey that was going to be made.

(15:02):
It would be very typical X sort of Cooley style, which would be green fruit, light, approachable, soft and malt forward. The biggest difference I suppose, was that in Powercor we decided to fully triple the still rather than Cooley where they double the still and Cooley, Ulta has a grain plant as well, of course, whereas here it was just three pot stills and it was a turnkey solution from four sites for sites came in, built, came in and I think it was September, 2017 and handed the keys over in May, 2018. So it was one of the fastest turnarounds ever by four sites. I mean, if you're looking for sites to build a distillery today, it's nearly a two year waiting list. So we got in at the right time, and that allowed us to be able to produce malt whiskey and pot still whiskey. So two distinct styles, both triple and double distillation, and that's what we're producing to this day.

Drew H (15:53):
Well, this is what's interesting, and just to give people kind of an idea, Cooley Distillery and John Tilling who's basically the godfather of Irish whiskey, the current iteration of Irish whiskey, that was the distillery that he had sold out. And that for a long time really between that and Irish distillers who would be Jameson Bushmills, that was basically the definition of what Irish whiskey was because there was nothing else going on. So when you're trying to define and maybe create a space for yourself in that world, what was the personality you wanted in terms of the perception of the whiskey?

John (16:35):
I suppose for us, it is very much about our location and where we are county Wicklows known as the Garden of Ireland, the Garden County. And within that, the absolute gem is the power square estate itself. So our distillery is very much influenced by our location. Our water is natural water running down off the mountains that surround us. Our pot of whiskey uses some of the barley that has grown here on the estate, our maturation warehouse. And we're very fortunate in the world of new Irish distilleries that we actually have a maturation warehouse on site. Most distilleries don't anymore. So that is our climate, that is a county Wicklow. So very much for us, we were location forward, which was important. We knew the quality of the barley and the cereal is there. We knew the quality of the water is there, and then it was by using someone for sites, we knew the quality of the equipment that we're going to make whiskey with was going to be the best you could possibly get.

(17:36):
So next was to get the barrels. And it was interesting to see that most of the barrels that were sourced in the first place were bourbon barrels, which would been very similar to the modus operandi of Cooley Distillery. And full disclosure, I'm also Cooley. I'm over 26, 27 years in the whiskey industry. So I was there in Cooley Distillery when as you said, there was Cooley Distillery, there was Bushmills and there was Middleton. That was it. There were three distilleries on the island of Ireland, and then we reopened KBA in 2007 to increase it to four. And today there's over 40 distilleries on the island of Ireland. So you can really see how things have changed.

Drew H (18:14):
Yeah, very unique experience at Powers court, not only because you have the estate right next door and then you have five star hotel as well, and you can really just kind of turn this into a weekend or even a week and enjoy that. But also on the distillery tour, there's some unique aspects. One of the things I really enjoyed was the food pairing, and this was where I was introduced to the idea that you would have a food historian actually come in to help you develop this. So talk a little bit about what you're providing there.

John (18:51):
Yeah, so our food pairing tour really has revolutionized the concept of food pairing when it comes to whiskey distilleries because how many times have you gone to a distillery and say, oh yeah, we'll do food pairing and it's maybe a piece of chocolate or a bit of cheese. That's it. There's no InBetween. So what we did was a local lady called Santina Kennedy who grew up here in the village of Venice. Scary. She said her grandfather was a work hand here on the estate, so she grew up on the estate playing in the field. She even playing in the ruined building that was in the Millhouse back in the day. She really looks into the concept of terroir when it comes to food and really go down like micro local when it comes to food. So she realized that in the history of Ireland, it was the law, the old Reham laws, which is the old Celtic law, that if a visitor or even a stranger showed up at your door by law, had to give them food, you had to entertain them.

(19:52):
So you would give them water, you would give them milk, you would give them whatever you had and you would feed them. And that was the old law 2000 years ago. So that concept was always there with Ireland. So she took that concept and said, okay, so let's branch it out a bit. So if people are coming to visit the distillery, let's have a selection of different foods as local as we possibly can, that not only reflect the style of the whiskey and compliment the whiskey, but also talk about the area from where they're from. So the type of foods that we, there's a link on everything. Firstly, they taste good and they really work well with the whiskeys. But secondly, it's supporting smaller. There's no mass produced product here.

(20:36):
We use a cheddar cheese, for example, which is made maybe about 20 miles from us here. Recently it was named the world's Best cheddar cheese, and that is one farmer who had been, he had a farm, he was producing milk, and he got just sick and tired of all his milk going down to a big conglomerate to be made into orange cheese and sold all over the world. He said, why don't I do that myself? And that's what he started doing, and he wraps them in cloth and they mature in converted cow sheds, the kind of the same as our distilleries in a converted millhouse equal age almost. We get pate from a trout farm that was beside a monastery. And if you think it's believed that whiskey was invented by the monks, the monks were the first to do distillation here in Ireland, this monastery, they would've been fishing as well.

(21:25):
So you can imagine back 1,500 years ago, they were eating trout and having the whiskey just like we're putting on our selection today. Another cheese that we use is again, quite local to us, it's a Bri style. It's a little bit harder than your average Bri. It's called Wicklow. Born is the Irish word for white. And we compliment that with honey, not just any honey, honey from beehives that are approximately a hundred meters from our distillery. You stick your head out the window, you can see the bees, you can see the hives. So we try to get as local as possible, and we really have pushed the boat out when it came to this, and it's been really, really successful. Not just as a, it's not a flash in the pan, it's not something we're doing just to attract people. It's something that we think it compliments what we are all about.

(22:11):
It compliments these smaller industries. Another hat that I wear is as a director for a company called Whitlow Naturally. And Whitlow naturally is the food and drink network of county Wicklow. So a lot of the food and drink that we use here in the distilleries is all sourced within our county. And our county is one of the most beautiful counties in Ireland for food and drink. So it's really just getting that out there and after the tour of people like the cheese or they like the honey or they like some of the charcuterie that we've had, it's all available to purchase in our visitor store. So again, we're supporting those smaller industries as well.

Drew H (22:47):
And then talk about the styles of whiskey, because you mentioned that you're double distilling and you're triple distilling, you're doing pot still and you're also doing a single malt. Are you doing any blends as well?

John (22:59):
We are now, we have four core products in our range, and our biggest selling product is a product called for Cullen Falls, which is a blend, 50% malt, 50% grains, so really high malt content. And that was deliberate. And that 50% malt is all malt that we've made here on site. The grain whiskey outsourced from elsewhere, and it was very important to have that. That was the first new whiskey that we released that wasn't a hundred percent Cooley, which is what we had previously because we sourced our liquid previously. And it was important to have a high mal content because we wanted people to have a little example of what was coming down the line when we would release our own single malt. So we do have a Cullin single malt then as well, which is a hundred percent made here on site. It's a hundred percent malted barley, and it was the first new whiskey a hundred percent made in county Wicklow in over a hundred years.

(23:46):
So it's all about the hundreds when it comes to that one. And it is a very light, approachable green fruit, forward apple pastry style single malt whiskey, really, really tasty. Then we have some of the sourced whiskeys, which are a higher age statements. So we have a 15-year-old, which is 15-year-old for Cullen, which is predominantly a grain whiskey from Cooley Distillery that has aged for almost 15 years in bourbon barrels, some of which then are finished for a number of months in Madeira cask just to give a different little element of complexity and body to the whiskey. And then our super premium is our 21-year-old single malt, and that is my love letter to Spain. The idea came from when I used to live in Spain, drinking all these different cherries and fortified wines. So we've taken some of our whiskey 21 years in Bourbon Barrel, but some of it has finished in Petro and some of it, this has finished in Raso, and then I've combined those together for this 21-year-old single malt whiskey.

(24:43):
So there are four core brands. As I said, we have made Pottail whiskey as well, though we haven't brought that to market yet. We're still at least 12, if not 24 months away from that. Our oldest is probably close to five years of age now, but pots still takes a little bit longer to knit together than malt whiskey. So I'd imagine six, seven years of age we might look at releasing it. We recently released a cask strength version of our single malt, which although it's a non age statement, is the first of our whiskey that is fully five years of age. So each year we're getting a little bit more. So right now we have blend for cul and falls. We've single mulch with our cask strength and our standard for Cullen Malt. We have a grain whiskey with our 15-year-old, and then we have our super premium 21-year-old single malt whiskey. And then of course we have our cask estate program, which is open to individuals who want to buy their own cask of whiskey. It's not an investment, it's nothing like that. It's people who love whiskey, who want to buy a cask, and we've anything from you make whiskey all the way up to prestige 20 21, 20 2-year-old casks of whiskey. So there's something for everyone here in Paris Court Distillery.

Drew H (25:49):
It was fun seeing the name for Cullen when I was in Bardstown, Kentucky that you guys had a collaboration with Bardstown Bourbon Company.

John (25:56):
That was a great collaboration and that worked very well. And we're always open to collaborations, not just with other whiskey companies, but also with beer companies, especially here in Wicklow. All the craft breweries here in the county, and there's only maybe four or five in our county, they've come to us looking to purchase barrels. And I've said, no, you can't buy them. We're going to give them to you.

(26:16):
So they will take the barrels and they'll put their beer, be in Imperial Stout or a barley wine or something like that. And so long as we get the barrels back afterwards, and then we will put a whiskey into it and finish it off. And we've done some of that. And last year, one of our whiskeys was named one of the best in the world in grain whiskeys from an imperial stout finish from a local brewery. So we're open to these collaborations the whole time, and Bartan was a great one to work with. A company as large as Barrett Sound and something, they're into that fusion series and they're into all these different collaborations. So it was a bit of a feather of an rcap to be asked to be involved in that, and we were delighted to be. So

Drew H (26:54):
If somebody wants to plan out the perfect day at Powers court between all the things that surrounded the distillery and include the distillery, what would be a good path for someone to

John (27:05):
Take? Well, first of all, pick that one week of summer that we generally have. It's usually the end of May, but no, no, I just, no, we're 45 minutes from Dublin City Center. So you come down to the Paris Court estate, you come on up, you visit the house, you visit the gardens, you spend your time there. Then maybe have a bite of lunch, and once you have a bit of sustenance in your stomach, come on up to us in the distillery, have a tour, have the food pairing tour afterwards because it's not a full meal. It's

(27:37):
Little samples, little bites. Have the food pairing tour, get to walk through the distillery, get to get the smells, the tastes into the warehouse. I mean, everyone remembers their first time in a whiskey warehouse, that aroma just surrounded by this sleeping whiskey. It's an amazing experience. And then back over to the back over into distillery to have that food pairing tour. And then after that, maybe if it is the summer, you have a few hours. And if you're a golfer, have a round of golf afterwards. So there's a lot to do. And if you're staying on the estate, there's the hotel, beautiful hotel, full spa, everything going for it. So as you mentioned earlier, you could easily spend a weekend if not a week here on the estate, but a full day would be House Gardens distillery. At a minimum. That's what you should be doing.

Drew H (28:28):
Very nice. Well, thank you, John. Thanks for sharing the information about the distillery and the experiences there and a bit of the history as well. It's a beautiful area. When I was doing my research on Irish whiskey history, I found it very interesting that Dublin at one point was tapping the same water that you guys have there to try to bring good quality fresh water into the city. So the value is definitely there for that.

John (28:55):
Yeah, and because of that, there were no distilleries in Wicklow from nearly 18, 18 0 8 onwards because Dublin was just the hotbed of whiskey distillation and there were a few craft breweries. All right. Certainly when I say there were no distillers, no legal distilleries, okay. A little bit of somewhere. So we always have to say, and we're talking about our for cul single malt, it's the first legally made whiskey in county Wicklow in over a hundred years. Very

Drew H (29:24):
Nice. I appreciate it. John, thank you so much for your time today and hopefully everybody now is excited about heading out in that direction and checking you guys out.

John (29:34):
Please do. Thank you very much. I look forward to meeting anyone. Look forward to saying hi.

Drew H (29:38):
Cheers.

(29:39):
Thank you. Well, I hope you this virtual flight to the Power Court distillery. If I piqued your interest in traveling to the distillery, make sure to head to whiskey lo.com/flights where you can view the profile of the Power Court distillery and a growing list of worldwide distilleries that we're featuring on the show. And dig deeper into the whiskey lore online distillery travel guide. Use the heart feature to show other fans which distilleries you are interested in, or log in with a free membership and bookmark your favorite distilleries to add them to your wishlist. The site features, planning tools, maps, tour dates, and booking links for over 300 distilleries worldwide. And you can start your journey@whiskeylore.com slash flights. Now stay tuned because in just a moment, I'll give you my three reasons why I think you should visit Powers Court Distillery. But first, it's time for this week in Whiskey lore 135 years ago this week, the Dublin based Freeman's Journal and Daily commercial advertiser featured an advert on page seven of the August 1st edition from the Royal Irish Distilleries of Belfast.

(30:53):
It stated that Dun v's. Old Irish whiskey is recommended by the medical profession in preference to French brandy and can be supplied in casks and cases for home use and exportation. These medical claims may seem strange to modern ears, but in an age when the Temperance Movement was creating a negative spin around whiskey, savvy distillers used these medical claims to legitimize their product as a wholesome staple of life. It's interesting to note that this advert also targets French brandy, which in 1889 was starting to make a comeback after a American aphid nearly destroyed the entire French wine and brandy industry. Well, health claims for whiskey would continue in Ireland into the 1920s. While in America, the need for medicinal spirits would disappear with the end of Prohibition, and the UK Parliament would clamp down on medical claims with laws like the Food and Drug Adulteration Act of 1928. Now, today, with the return of Irish brands like Dunville and j and j McConnell's, these modern distillers are attempting to bring back some of these authentic historic labels. But unfortunately, they can't be 100% accurate as they must scrub those medical claims from their designs.

(32:17):
Well, as we prepared to leave the Powers Court distillery and make our way to our next distillery destination, I want to give you a couple of tips if you are planning on going to Powers Court. The first is to make sure to head to the Powers Court Gardens while you're there. These meticulously maintained gardens are amongst the finest in Europe, featuring Italian terraces, formal gardens, and a stunning array of plants and flowers. And of course, you have the pet cemetery and the Japanese gardens as well. Another must-see is the Powers Court waterfall, which is Ireland's highest waterfall, and it's actually located within the estate, though you will have to take a little drive around to get to it. It's an area that's ideal for picnicking, hiking, or simply relaxing while you're enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. And as we close out our trip to the Powers Cord Distillery, if you're still on the fence about a visit here, let me give you my three reasons why you should have this distillery on your whiskey wishlist.

(33:17):
Well, first of all, the beauty of this place is undeniable. If you're looking for a distillery visit that is surrounded by family friendly activities and you want to add in a hotel stay, couldn't ask for much more of a perfect setting. And second, the elevated food pairing experience give you a real taste of the fruits of the land, thanks to Santina Kennedy's amazing work and knowledge of the area's culinary and agricultural history. And third, that's still a rarity in Ireland's emerging whiskey industry to get a chance to taste long aged whiskeys on your tour. And since the Cooley Distillery has produced some incredible spirits for Power Court here, you'll get an opportunity to dig into some of those longer age statements. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's time to hop in the car and take a two hour drive west on the M four and M six to a little village called a Hara, where a husband and wife team have taken an abandoned mill in the center of town, and not only breathe new life into it, but also brought the most eco-friendly distillery to Ireland. Make sure to subscribe to the Whiskey Lore podcast so you don't miss any of the great whiskey flights to come. I'm your travel guide Drew Hanish. And until we meet again, cheers and Slava for transcripts and travel information, including maps, distillery planning information and more. At to whiskey lore.com/flights. Whiskey lords of production of Travel Fuels Life, LLC.