Royal Oak distillery

Royal Oak distillery began its life as Walsh whisky distillery in 2013 with Italian drinks company Illva Saronno making a major investment to help fund the €25 million ($34.1 million USD) construction of the Walsh Whiskey Company’s distillery near Carlow, Ireland. Walsh whisky distillery was renamed Royal Oak distillery in 2019 when Illva Saronno took full ownership of the distillery. The previous brands of the Walsh family: Writers Tears and The Irishman Whiskey are still being produced in Midleton.

How is whiskey produced at Royal Oak?

They built the distillery building on the Urglin Glebe family estate in Carlow, in which three pot stills were set up in October 2015. The copper pot stills come from the Scottish company Forsyths. The largest of the Pot Sills has a capacity of 15,000 liters. These are supposed to produce pot still and grain whiskey as well as blended and malt whiskey.

Column stills are also available for the grain and blended whiskey. The site is Strategically very close to the Barrow River and the water supply comes from an underground water reservoir. The barley will also be obtained from local farmers. At full tilt the Walsh Whiskey Distillery at Royal Oak has the capacity to produce 650,000 cases (two and a half million litres of pure alcohol (LPA’s) or 8 million bottles) of whiskey annually

History of the Walsh Whiskey Company Distillery

Although they have been in the whiskey and spirits business for a number of years, Rosemary and Bernard Walsh only founded their own distillery in 2013. Unfortunately the couples partnership with Illva Saronno ended in 2019 resulting in the distillery being renamed to Royal Oak

Royal Oak factsheet

Can I tour Royal Oak?

Yes Royal Oak distillery is tourable. On Trip Advisor the distillery has been rated as excellent by 0 of tours to date. This gives Royal Oak an overall rating of