Green Distillery — County Cork Single Malt Whisky

Green Distillery is a closed Irish whiskey distillery that was located in Cork city, County Cork, Ireland. It was founded in 1796 and was closed in the second half of the 19th century after being absorbed into the Cork Distilleries Company, eventually passing into the hands of Irish Distillers. It is historically notable for housing an early experimental continuous still, patented decades before Aeneas Coffey's design became the industry standard.

History

The Green Distillery was established on 12 May 1796, when distillers Robert Allan and Denis Corcoran purchased a dwelling house and maltings on North York Street (now Thomas Davis Street) in Cork city, on a site that had previously been run as a malthouse by Thomas Wood from around 1780. By 1802 the partners were operating a single pot still of 762 gallons; output grew steadily over the following decades, reaching roughly 100,000 gallons by 1828 and around 160,000 gallons by 1833 according to excise records of the time.

Ownership passed around 1812 to brothers Thomas and Joseph Shee together with Benjamin Hodges, with Thomas overseeing distilling on site and Joseph handling sales from London. In 1834 Joseph Shee patented an early continuous-distillation apparatus at the Green Distillery, using four pot stills linked in series - a design that anticipated the principle later perfected by the Coffey patent still. Financial difficulties in 1830 saw Joseph Shee take sole control with backing from James Kiernan, who became outright owner by 1835 and remained so until his death in December 1844. The distillery was then bought by George Waters, a former co-owner of the nearby Daly's Distillery, in July 1845.

Waters ran the Green Distillery until 1867, when it became one of four Cork distilleries - alongside Daly's, North Mall and the Watercourse - amalgamated to form the Cork Distilleries Company (CDC), with Midleton joining the group the following year. Whiskey production at the Green site wound down during the 1870s and 1880s as CDC concentrated distilling at Midleton and North Mall, and the Green Distillery continued afterwards purely as a bonded warehouse.

Quick Facts

• Region: County Cork (Cork city), Ireland
• Founded: 1796
• Owner: Cork Distilleries Company; successor Irish Distillers (Pernod Ricard)
• Status: Closed
• Stills: Pot stills, including an experimental 1834 continuous still made of four linked pot stills

Closure & Legacy

Whiskey production at the Green Distillery ended in the 1870s-1880s as the Cork Distilleries Company consolidated distilling at its Midleton and North Mall sites, and the Green premises were repurposed as a bonded store. Gin production briefly returned to the site in the mid-20th century, and Irish Distillers, which absorbed CDC in 1966, continued to mature whiskey in bond there into the 1980s. The buildings have since been almost entirely demolished, but one of the distillery's original pot stills survives and remains in use as an experimental still at the New Midleton Distillery, giving the long-closed Green Distillery a working link to present-day Irish Distillers production. No independent single-distillery bottlings under the Green name are documented today, so any collectible interest lies with rare 19th-century Cork whiskeys that may have drawn on its stock rather than with releases carrying its own name.