The April 2023 opening of The Causeway Distillery was a landmark moment in the over 400-year history of Bushmills Irish Whiskey for several reasons.
Part of Proximo Spirits’ £60 million (US$74.6 million) investment in its Irish single malt distilling and ageing facility at Bushmills, it underlined family owner Juan Domingo (JD) Beckmann’s commitment to the brand and passion for the Irish whiskey category.
It also reinforced the brand’s status as the leader in Irish single malt whiskey. Before and since the opening, Bushmills has been releasing some of its rarest, finest aged whiskeys, from its small-batch World Wood series to its oldest expression yet, the 46 Year Old Secrets Of The River Bush edition, and many more besides.
Travel retail has played a vital part in bringing each expression to life to international audiences, with more to come.
A decade after Proximo’s 2015 acquisition of Bushmills, The Moodie Davitt Report paid a visit to the County Antrim village that is home to the brand, to talk whiskey, wood, ageing, community, technology, tradition and travel retail in the company of Master Distiller Colum Egan and Master Blender Alex Thomas. (A follow-up story with Colum Egan will follow shortly.)
Spending time chatting over a glass with Thomas in the Old Distillery, you get a strong sense of how whiskey-making and maturation knowledge has been passed down the generations, with a focus on maintaining quality, but also of a recognition that consumers now want to drink in new ways, with taste profiles evolving.
Thomas grew up in the local area, the fourth of five girls, with Black Bush and Bushmills Original among her father and grandfather’s drinking staples.
“Bushmills was seen a cure-all for ailments so I was always curious about that,” she says with a smile. “I was working first in the wood industry and then came to Bushmills in 2004. I have learned about all parts of the business but maturation is where my heart is. It’s where you give the whiskey its colour and flavour.
“There is no dull day when you are working with casks and I haven’t found a cask yet that does not work with Bushmills. Our liquid is so delicate and so pure that we don’t have to hide what we do. That’s what dedication to quality over the generations means.”
Bushmills has not only long-standing partnerships with its cask suppliers, and all casks made to its specifications, but it also has third and fourth-generation family coopers on site who inspect every cask to ensure the conditions for maturation are ideal.
As we talk, Thomas offers an array of insights into quality of wood and cask styles, talking about topics ranging from storage conditions to the influence of weather to the experimentation that leads to newness.
“I want to push the boundaries where I can while staying true to our traditions,” she says. “Whatever we do will always be led by flavour, not by age. You must wait until it’s ready. So you have to play with cask maturation to ensure quality is what it should be at the right time.
“What also guides us is that you have to think sustainably and about what you leave for the future. We may never taste the final product but are lucky to create distillate that will be here long after us.”
Not surprisingly, when we ask what most excites her about what lies ahead, Thomas comes back to innovation in wood and cask trial and use.
“Take Mizunara oak casks, which we used for the fifth The Causeway Collection series releases (a selection of rare and exclusive single malt Irish whiskeys). These casks are rare and expensive but with our reputation and experience in sourcing wood, we were able to buy some. They are difficult casks to work with due to their shape and character but as we have that dedication to caring for them and working with them, we knew we could create a special expression from virgin wood.
“We have many experiments with wood taking place all the time, testing what new-make spirit looks like after one, two, three years, monitoring its maturity.
“The new distillery has helped us showcase our wood skills and create bold but balanced flavours. You can always keep creating – you become a chef in fact, just using whiskey.”
Remarkably, the transition to the new distillery was smooth, with the first distillations estimated at 97-98% of the target Bushmills character. For Thomas, it was not entirely a surprise.
“Having distillate that carried our essential Bushmills character was vital. We were not only drawing on years of knowledge, we had the same water source, the same barley and the same stills shape. Other distillers could not do that as they wouldn’t know what their water source would produce or what their stills would turn out. That gave me a lot of faith in the future, but it was also a relief,” she laughs.
Tasting whiskey with Alex Thomas is to take a journey through Bushmills’ recent history in travel retail, told through its single malts.
Black Bush 80/20 PX Sherry Cask Reserve, released as a travel retail exclusive in 2022, while not a single malt, carries a high malt component, adding value for the consumer, and is smooth, delicate and sweet, with a spiced finish, drawing on the oloroso and PX casks in which it is matured.
This was a starting point on the journey to diversity that Bushmills has embraced in its travel retail offer.
Thomas says: “As Maturation Manager at the time I am proud of this – it was an exciting project to see what we could do with Black Bush and take it somewhere else. It’s an easy sip on the palate at 40% ABV, an easy way into whiskey as the consumer begins their journey before perhaps entering single malt.”
Bushmills 10 Year Old represents “a stepping stone into single malts”, says Thomas, with its smooth, floral nose, vanilla character and elegant finish.
“Our 10 Year Old travel retail exclusive finished in oloroso sherry celebrates four decades of collaboration with Spain’s renowned cask makers, the Paez family. It is the embodiment of the marriage of single malt, golden in hue with rich oloroso aromas and flavours of walnuts, dried fruit and Spanish oak.”
The 15 Year Old, matured in American oak bourbon casks, is more of a “stripped back” expression, says Thomas, but equally emphasises the brand DNA with fruity delicate flavours, vanilla, milk chocolate and hints of coconut, sweet apple and a hint of clove.
“Our 15 shows how versatile Bushmills is. It links back to the time when we couldn’t export to the USA and was held back; now it has fought back and this spirit encapsulates that resurgence for me.”
The latest introduction, the 18 Year Old Colheita port finish, carries a rich fruit, spicy character and taste.
“It is an elevation of our 16 Year Old,” says Thomas. “We also listened to our consumer who wanted a higher ABV. In fact it came about as an 18 because maturation only took one year and we had thought that port influence might take longer. It shows we blenders can be surprised too.”
On the wider picture for the category, Thomas adds: “This single malt category has grown as people want to experience new profile, drink better and even try drinks that their parents didn’t. Palates have changed and a love for Irish whiskey has returned.
“It is also about variety. We don’t all eat the same things so why would we drink the same things? Through our malts we can introduce wine drinkers and other spirits drinkers to the category.
“We don’t insist that people just drink a whiskey neat or with a drop of water. The category is much more approachable today. Everyone should enjoy it their way, not anyone else’s way. That’s why the growth of mixology alongside Irish whiskey is exciting. It opens us up to new audiences.”
On how she views the role of travel retail in amplifying what the blending team does, Thomas says: “Travel retail is a place where we can explain our story and collections such as the World Wood series as something unique.
“We can reach people that we do not normally reach and it can open up new markets. ARI at Dublin Airport does a great job and closer to home Belfast International with its refreshed retail offers a great showcase so people who come here will be prompted to shop but also to visit us. The airport can be a start and end point for the whole experience.
“It is great that we can offer something for that special market, where people are going on holidays or for work and to see our new gift packs or new bottle changes and capture the imagination of travellers. That is summed up in the World Wood Series which has particular packaging and tells its own story. This also excites our teams who are passionate and curious about our whiskies. That passion and knowledge is vital for telling our story.”
She adds: “Travel retail connects closely to what I do. I travel the world to find new casks that people will enjoy and that will work with our liquid. Flying gives people the opportunity to experience that at the airport, and to travel home with our whiskies once they are made.”
Discussing how new expressions are crafted for markets around the world, Thomas says the distilling team doesn’t simply work to order.
“We aim to respond to market demand, but the other part is that we must have something matured and ready at the right time. The recent 18 Year Old that we introduced to travel retail – matured in bourbon barrels and oloroso sherry butts for 17 years before finishing in rare Colheita port casks – was ready when we needed a new World Wood series release.
“But it could have been a different age range. If it was not ready, we would have made a different choice. Irish whiskey makers also learned a long time ago from Prohibition in the USA that you cannot make inferior-quality product.”
She also acknowledges the freedom she has to trial and test, a freedom encouraged by owner JD Beckmann, who on distillery opening night in 2023 spoke proudly about his journey in Irish whiskey and how he fell in love with Bushmills and Black Bush in particular.
Thomas says, “That love is what drove his investment, that belief ignites the fire in us all – we come to work every day with that faith that we are the best whiskey in the world and that comes right from the owner.”
Looking to the next phase of whiskey making and cask trialling, where does Thomas look for inspiration?
“Food is becoming an ever greater influence for me. As a child I had plain tastes but travel opened my mind to so many flavours. I love those local experiences and taste profiles and educating your palate never stops. It teaches you profiles, how to identify tastes and pairings that work. It’s a never-ending journey.”
As our chat draws to a close over a final dram – Bushmills 18 Year Old, if you are asking – we ask about Thomas’ experiences as a woman in what has traditionally been the male-dominated world of distilling?
“Being named Alex means some people are surprised to see a woman in the role but that has never mattered here.
“I was embraced from the beginning by a team that wanted to share knowledge with anybody who wanted to take on that knowledge. I wanted to hear the stories of those people who were here for decades before me, how the business had changed and how wood gives flavour. I loved all of it.
“I was given so many opportunities that put me in the position I am in today, and Bushmills pushed me into things I never thought I was capable of doing.
“If I can stand up and tell my and our story, then that is paying it forward to the people that come after me. For me to be a small part of a story that has run for over 400 years and will run for many more generations is just a real honour. It’s my dream job.” ✈
