About
Family-owned craft distillery in the Boyne Valley, Drogheda, County Louth. Built Ireland's first gin school experience. Produces Listoke 1777 gin and Wise Owl whiskey (one of Ireland's first smoked whiskies). Name references the family's distillation history dating to 1777. Relocated to new Gin House in Tenure, Monasterboice.
Production Details
The Listoke Distillery Tale
In the ancient Boyne Valley, where Neolithic monuments stand sentinel over rolling fields, the Listoke Distillery carries forward a whispered legacy from 1777. Here in County Louth, just inland from where the River Boyne meets the Irish Sea, Raymond and Marie Gribben chose to resurrect their family's distillation story in 2016.
The land itself speaks of continuity—this is where High King Brian Boru once ruled, where medieval monks at nearby Monasterboice illuminated manuscripts while perfecting the art of *uisce beatha*. The Gribbens understand this weight of history. Their distillery name doesn't just reference their ancestors' craft from two and a half centuries ago; it anchors them to the long Irish tradition of turning grain into liquid poetry.
From their original site in Drogheda, they've moved to new quarters in Tenure, Monasterboice, where ancient round towers cast shadows over modern copper. Here, they've built something unprecedented in Irish distilling—a gin school where visitors don't just taste the spirit, but craft it themselves, learning the alchemy that transforms botanicals into something transcendent.
But whiskey remains their true calling. Their Wise Owl breaks new ground in the Irish renaissance, embracing smoke in a tradition that typically shuns it. While Scottish distillers have long courted peat, Irish whiskey-makers traditionally preferred the clean, triple-distilled clarity that made their spirit the world's most popular before Prohibition nearly killed it. The Gribbens' willingness to explore smoke signals how far Ireland's whiskey revival has come—confident enough now to experiment while honoring the core traditions.
In their stillhouse, copper gleams under Louth's changeable skies. Each batch carries the mineral signature of Boyne Valley water and the ambition of a family reclaiming their heritage. The distillery represents something profound about modern Irish whiskey—not just resurrection, but reinvention, honoring the past while fearlessly exploring new territories.
Standing here among the stills, you feel the pulse of Ireland's whiskey future: rooted in ancient soil, flowing with ancestral knowledge, yet unafraid to chart new courses through familiar waters.