Lough Ree Distillery

Where the River Shannon swells into Lough Ree's ancient waters, three siblings made a choice that would have seemed impossible just decades earlier. In 2018, Peter, Sheila, and Michael Clancy established their distillery in Lanesborough, County Longford, at the very heart of Ireland's midlands where water has shaped both landscape and destiny for millennia.

The Shannon, Ireland's longest river, carries more than water here—it carries the memory of a nation's relationship with uisce beatha, the water of life. When the Clancys began distilling gin and vodka in those first years, they were laying groundwork for something larger. By 2022, they had taken the leap that transforms any Irish distillery from craft operation to cultural guardian: they began distilling Irish whiskey.

The distinction matters profoundly. Ireland's whiskey heritage stretches back over a thousand years, predating Scotch by centuries, yet by the 1970s the tradition had nearly vanished—casualties of war, politics, and changing tastes. What the Clancys achieved in Lanesborough represents more than entrepreneurship; it's resurrection. Today, they hold the title of Ireland's smallest GI-verified Irish Whiskey Distillery, a designation that connects their copper stills to centuries of protected tradition.

The water that feeds their process flows from the Shannon and Lough Ree itself—soft, mineral-kissed water that has nourished this landscape since the ice retreated. Each drop carries the character of limestone and bog, of a river system that drains nearly a fifth of Ireland. In the stillhouse, that water meets grain in the ancient dance of fermentation and distillation, following patterns refined over generations.

Their current releases—Bart's Irish Whiskey, Sling Shot Gin, and The Bridge Whiskey series—represent just the beginning. The Clancys are constructing a larger commercial-scale distillery overlooking Lough Ree, where the morning mist rises from waters that have reflected Irish history for thousands of years.

Standing in their stillhouse today, watching the Shannon flow past toward the Atlantic, one witnesses more than whiskey production. This is Ireland's distilling renaissance in microcosm—small, determined, rooted in place, and looking toward a future where the water of life flows freely once again through the Irish landscape.