Echlinville distillery

Shane Banriff, co-founder of the Echlinville distillery, has had the license to distill since 2013. The young distillery has found a home in a venerable mansion right on the coast of Northern Ireland. This estate is also the name of the distillery. Until the first Echlinville whiskey comes onto the market, you can already enjoy gin and vodka from this interesting young distillery.

How does Echlinville whiskey taste?

This secret will not be revealed until 2020 at the earliest. However, Echlinville is already producing a whiskey under the old brand name Dunville, which now comes from another distillery, but in future it will come from the new Echlinville distillery.

How is Echlinville whiskey produced?

The barley comes from the surrounding fields that make up the Echlinville estate. 50% of it is malted in an external malt house. The barley is stored in four silos on the farm. It started small - with two stainless steel mash and fermentation vats and a pot still that had to be used for the distillation twice.

Since these humble beginnings, however, a lot has happened: the distillery has now increased to four mash tuns and five fermentation vats. The lonely pot still was joined by another, so that there is now a wash still and a spirit still. The wash still is classically onion-shaped and has no particular indentations or bulges. The spirit still, on the other hand, has a spherical bulge at the beginning of the neck. The Lyne Arm can be connected to a tube condenser as needed, which is used for whiskey production. If, on the other hand, vodka or gin is distilled in it, the Lyne Arm can be coupled to a column still, in which the necessary flavoring agents (juniper and other herbs) are added before the two tall column stills for the final rounds. In order to be able to accommodate this huge apparatus, a large still house was required. This is almost completely glazed and offers a fantastic view. The estate is located directly on the east coast of Northern Ireland, so that the whiskey produced here can benefit from the salty sea air and the consistently mild maritime climate.

Echlinville Distillery History

As early as the mid-1730s, the large landowner Charles Echlin bought an estate with stables and garden houses near the village of Kircubbin. The manor house he named Echlinville House in its current form dates back to 1860. Today, the former barns house the Echlinville Distillery. In addition to the manor house, there are still some farm buildings that at least temporarily housed the stills and a large part of all production steps. What Shane Braniff initiated in 2008 bore its first fruits in 2013 when he received the license to distill and set up his own distillery. Since the beginning of 2013, Shane Braniff and his wife Lynn have continued to build and built a stillhouse, several silos and a modern warehouse. A visitor center is already being planned and will be opened in 2017.

Echlinville factsheet