Midleton Distillery celebrates 200 years

In 1825, the Murphy family established an Irish whiskey distillery: Midleton.

Two centuries later, the name is one of the most famous in whiskey. It’s more than just one building. Midleton is a complete brand home, a place for tourists to drink and learn, and something of a Mecca of Irish whiskey.

The legendary Old Midleton Distillery operated from 1825-1975, but on the same site, the New Midleton Distillery creates award-winning whiskey brands, including Jameson, the biggest of all Irish whiskey, as well as Redbreast, Midleton Very Rare, Powers, the Spot Whiskeys, Method and Madness, and Knappogue Castle.  

The world-renowned Midleton Distillery, which is owned by Irish Distillers (itself part of Pernod Ricard) will celebrate its 200-year anniversary with whiskey launches, including Midleton Very Rare 2025, as well as the much-anticipated sixth and final chapter of the Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Collection which contains whiskey from 45 to 50 years old and will yield the very last drops of spirit from Old Midleton Distillery before the distillery went silent forever.

Carol Quinn, head of archives at Irish Distillers, will also be digging deep into its famed archive to bring to life the stories, the people and, of course, the whiskeys that have shaped Midleton Distillery. We managed to pin her down to talk about two centuries of remarkable history. 

Carol Quinn and the archives at Irish Distillers

Midleton is the only Irish whiskey distillery that has its own archive, and it is rich with records of the past. “We have the starting documentation from the very first day, from when they signed the lease to take over the premises and opened the ledger. Think of a big leather-bound book – with clean pages and a quill in the ink pot – where they wrote the first notes. We have all of those, the entire documented history over 200 years, which is completely unique in Irish distilling,” Quinn explains. 

What struck Quinn most about those early days of whiskey-making was the global ambition from day one. “The Murphy family who founded Midleton Distillery were merchants, and they were already involved in global trade, dealing around the Mediterranean with things like olive oil, almonds, cloves… luxury goods. They were sailing their own ships to China in the 1830s, bringing tea back. We have some of the ships manifest, and we can see they’re grading them on the flavour and the quality. They brought that knowledge into the selling of whiskey,” Quinn says. “When they opened this distillery, they weren’t just making whiskey for the area or the country, but with a global ambition”. 

The Murphy family today are probably best known for their eponymous brewery, which produces Murphy’s Irish Stout, but their contribution to Irish whiskey is enormous. Quinn says the fact that they didn’t have their surname on the whiskey label the way Jameson or Power’s had means they’re one of the lesser-known whiskey families, but they’re fascinating, nonetheless. “In terms of Irish economic history, they’re huge. They’re born entrepreneurs. They decided to invest in whiskey as they wanted something that was a bit more generational. But they weren’t distillers. They had to learn from the ground up,” she explains. 

“They would send members of the family out from Cork city to live at the Distiller’s Cottage here onsite at Midleton and learn the process from other distillers. That tradition remained; it didn’t matter if you were destined to be chairman of the board, you swept the floor of the still house, and you learned from the head distiller. It meant that they brought that knowledge to the management of the distillery”.    

Life at Murphy’s Midleton

The ambition is reflected in the 1867 amalgamation into the Cork Distilleries Company. James Murphy first brought together four other Cork distilleries (Daly’s, the Green, North Mall, and the Watercourse) under his leadership and finally added his own distillery to the flock. “It refocused the ambitions, and they went forward stronger than ever,” Quinn says. “You see evidence of this in the labels at the time. As soon as the CDC was formed, they started entering their whiskies into international competitions and in the 1870s, you see the medals they’ve won on the labels. There are ones from 1867 and 1868, I think, gold medals from an exhibition in Paris that were featured on the labels at the time”. 

Of course, it’s not just the Murphy family who were crucial to that success. Over 200 years you can imagine how many people worked here. Walking around Midleton, Quinn says she sees the footsteps of people who worked here. She tells a story of one in particular, when she noticed a window in one of the old buildings had a name etched into the glass. “You could only see it when the sun shines in a particular way. It was a man named Cornelius Coffey. I went to look into the employee records, I could see that in 1930, he was working overtime in the distillery stables, looking after the distillery horses. He was working with a guy called John Murphy. They were cleaning the chimneys and doing security work. It must have been raining so they’re standing under the building, and they’re bored, so he scratches his name into the glass. Almost 100 years later, it’s there”. 

This simple record of Coffey chatting with his friend one day as they were about the business of their distillery is what Quinn loves. “Their essence and DNA are preserved in the buildings and the records. That’s what makes it so special. Each person is unique, and they brought their own character work. There’s so many stories like that”. 

Another favourite of hers is from The Cooperage, where master cooper Ger Buckley does many demonstrations today. “There was a series of trees outside known as the Seven Trees. You’d say to your buddies, ‘I’m just popping over to the Seven Trees’ because they’d hollowed the trunk of one of them, and that’s where they’d stash a bottle of new make spirit,” Quinn revelas. “You nip over, have a quick glass, and head back to work. It’s wonderful because it brings the buildings to life; it shows the vibrancy, the fun, the laughter. It was a nice place to work, and that comes through in the records, and it was because of all these personalities”. 

Quinn feels that camaraderie is something the original distillers of 1825 would recognise in Midleton’s today. “Not only that, they would be related to some of the people who still work here. We have a workforce that comes from all over the world today, but there’s also a core of people who live locally and whose fathers and grandfathers worked here,” she remarks.

Whiskey making in the 19th century

The archives give us a window into so much, including what whiskey production was like at Midleton in the 19th century. “We have the complete set of records, from the purchase of the barley from local farmers, the mash bills, the distillation records, the maturation records of where casks were in the warehouses, and the sales records. We have the full life cycle of the process,” Quinn explains. 

For the past few years, she’s been cataloguing, cleaning and preserving these records. We know they were making single pot still primarily, but that they experimented with column stills, blending, and were very innovative and consumer-focused. “If there was a demand, they were willing to try something,” Quinn says. “But they always pitched their whiskey at a premium level, they weren’t too interested in dumbing down a recipe”. Those mashbills are looked at by the current distilling team for product inspiration today. 

One project of hers that Irish Distillers is championing in its anniversary year is her work analysing old bottle labels. The stories they tell concern how consumer-facing the 19th-century whisky creators were. “That’s maybe a phrase we associate with the modern industry, but they were very interested in what their customers wanted and providing that,” Quinn says. “What I found was a lot of bespoke labels. They would mature at different age statements for different customers. They would use different fonts, styles typography… their connection to their customer was very strong”.   

Challenges and change

Of course, it hasn’t been all plain sailing over the last two centuries. During the 1980s, Midleton was the only place making Irish whiskey for a time in the Republic of Ireland (Bushmills operated in Nothern Ireland), and it was the only place making Irish single pot still. “Our distilling team were the only ones with that pot still experience. When you think of that, it’s actually stunning that Irish whiskey was enjoyed all over the world, and then there was only one place left,” Quinn remarks. 

She says that over the 200 years, there have been so many changes, good times, bad times. But what shines through is the commitment to the product. “That comes before everything. They never compromised on the quality of the product. In the 1950s, they reduced their distilling time. There was a period then when they were only distilling for three weeks of the year because sales had fallen so dramatically. They pulled back on production but never scaled back on the quality”. It’s poignant to consider those sacrifices now as news broke this week that production at Midleton will be paused from April until summer.

Midleton has overcome worse. In 1966, a merger of Cork Distilleries Company, John Jameson & Son, and John Power & Son changed the course of Irish whiskey. It was a Hail Mary to try and save a ravaged industry. Quinn reflects on this period in a broader sense of what it meant to Ireland at the time. “I think people know the story of the merger, but I don’t think people know the context of the economic decline that Ireland was in at that time. The story of this merger has to be understood in that context”. 

The numbers make for sobering reading. “Of the generation born in Ireland between 1930 and 1940, 70% had to emigrate because there was no work in Ireland. Think about that in terms of a town or a city: 70% of the youth is gone. There’s no marriages, no children, no laughter, no fun. The 1950s were a time of dismal gloom in Ireland, and families were torn apart by emigration. There’s no phones, no Zoom, no Teams… you literally might never see your child again. That was the background to the formation of Irish Distillers,” Quinn explains. 

Quinn underlines a message of hope in this despair, commenting that the management of those three companies believed that they had a product and an industry that could work, that could employ Irish people in Ireland. “It was something that was going to add to the economic resurgence in the country. That was a lot of the motivation behind it. This sense of almost economic patriotism and belief that they had an industry and a product that could mean something to the future. Back then, it wasn’t that there weren’t jobs people liked; there wasn’t any employment, and there was no future. That’s what Irish Distillers gave: a future to everyone working at Midleton Distillery. It was that sense of hope that helped the transition into the new premises. People weren’t just doing it for themselves, but for their family and their children and the future”. 

The people make the whiskey

What is so striking about Quinn’s work is how it makes the history come alive because it’s so rooted in the people and looks beyond simply the bigger names. Later this year, the Barley Purchase Books from Midleton Distillery dating back to the 1820s and 1830s will be available to search on Ancestry as part of Irish Distillers’ ongoing partnership with a genealogy company. 

These physical records of purchases of barley from individual farmers by Midelton Distillery are crucial. Due to the Irish Civil War in 1822, a lot of Irish documented history was destroyed, including early census materials. “When it comes to these farmers, there is no other record of them living or dying than these Barley Purchase Books. There’s no birth cert, no death cert, no anything. So to find their names here is a genealogical treasure trove. We’ve been doing a lot of work to preserve those because I understand how important they are. They are a direct link for farming families to their own history because we are still, today, buying barley from those same geographical regions”.

Once the distillery opened, it changed the lives of those farmers by providing a guaranteed market. “That would have been a game changer in allowing them to continue to farm, to stay with their families on their land and to have a future. The Barley Purchase Books are hugely important, not only in terms of Irish whiskey but in terms of agricultural history in Ireland”. 

As Quinn reminds us, whiskey distilling is an agricultural industry, and connections to farmers are so important. “To actually put names to those individuals throughout history was a wonderful thing to do. What was interesting is that there were some women’s names as well. Generally, you wouldn’t own the land yourself as a woman back then; you were a widow more than anything else and holding the land until a son comes along or was of age. But it was wonderful to see those names pop up”. 

From Old Midleton to New Midleton

In 1975, production moved to New Midleton. The oldest buildings at Old Midleton go back to the 1790s. The site was originally a woolen mill built by Martin Lynch, but he poured so much money into the beauty of those buildings that he could never recover it, according to Quinn, so it was turned into military barracks. These buildings, many of which you can see today at the brand home, are incredibly beautiful, but they’re not always the most practical or efficient. 

So, the decision was made to transfer all production to a purpose-built distillery. Quinn says that in its day, it was the most technologically advanced in Europe, able to create the different styles of whiskey that were the signatures of Irish Distillers: Jameson, Powers, and Midleton whiskey. But it was the same workforce, one that had literally grown up on site with the old distillery, because a lot of them got into the trade as their fathers and grandfathers worked there. It was those men who transferred up to the new plant. 

“If you take a step back and think about that, they were working in Victorian environments,” Quinn explains. “The water wheel you still see here turning every day, the old millstones, they were carrying things on their backs. Electricity had only gone in 40 years beforehand. They went up to a more modernised, computerised production facility. Think of the challenge for those men to understand and then master that new technology”. 

We’re very lucky here that not only do we still have the records, but an awful lot of those families and colleagues are still living in the town of Midleton. Quinn does an oral history programme with them, and they share the stories about that time. “Definitely they were frightened and daunted about this, but they desperately wanted it to succeed. That’s what comes through when they’re recalling those memories. They embraced it because they saw this was the future. It’s a story of human perseverance and belief in what they were doing”. 

Reflecting on 200 years of Midleton

The legacy of Midleton is impossible to quantify, so seismic has its impact on whiskey been. Quinn says it’s been the standard bearer for Irish whiskey. “Over that 200 years, it has remained true to its essence, to its product, making whiskey here from Irish barley. It is today not only producing the world’s most enjoyed Irish whiskey, which is Jameson, but some of the world’s most awarded, including Redbreast and Midleton Very Rare, the latter some consider to be the very pinnacle of Irish whiskey”.

Quinn feels that if the original workers in 1825 could see the brand home today and what’s been accomplished, they’d naturally be incredibly proud. “Midelton Distillery is the most awarded distillery in the world*. But I always say, it’s not just the distiller or blending teams; if the guy whose job it is to open the gate in the morning doesn’t turn up, then they’re not distilling or blending. Everybody is part of the team. That’s what they’d be incredibly proud of, that the whiskey they worked on is still so admired globally”. 

It’s a culmination of the ambitions they held back in 1825. Within 30 years of establishing the distillery, the Murphys installed what is still today the largest pot still ever used for distilling whiskey. “That was a very brave step for a start-up,” Quinn remarks. Today, the world’s largest operational stills are in New Midleton. They represent the fruition of the founder’s purpose: that Irish whiskey continues to be made in this same place in County Cork.  

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone. Sláinte.

You can buy Jameson, Redbreast, Midleton Very Rare, Powers, the Spot Whiskeys, Method and Madness, and Knappogue Castle from Master of Malt. Just click the links in the product names.

*Based on the product tasting results of the nine most influential blind tasting competitions in 2024, including; The Irish Whiskey Masters, International Wine & Spirit Competition, International Spirits Competition, Beverage Testing Institute, San Francisco World Spirits Competition, New York World Wine and Spirits Competitions, Singapore World Spirits Competition, The Luxury Masters and the World Whiskies Awards.

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