Jones Road Distillery — Dublin Single Malt Whisky

Jones Road Distillery is an Irish whiskey distillery located on Jones Road in Dublin, Ireland, on the north side of the city near the banks of the River Tolka. It was founded in 1873 and closed in 1941, ending nearly seven decades of production. Also known by its trading name D.W.D. (Dublin Whiskey Distillery Company), it was one of the six great Dublin whiskey distilleries documented by Alfred Barnard in his 1887 survey of the UK's distilleries.

History

The Dublin Whiskey Distillery Company Limited was formed in 1872 by a consortium of seven Dublin businessmen, including John Brannick, with £100,000 in capital to build a major new distillery to meet booming demand for Irish whiskey. Construction on the Jones Road site began in July 1872, and the first mash was produced in July 1873. Water was drawn from the Royal Canal via a mile-long pipe, and the distillery was equipped with four pot stills housed in a still house some 60 feet high.

By the time Alfred Barnard visited in the mid-1880s, the distillery was producing around 560,000 gallons of spirit a year, with management citing a maximum capacity of roughly 800,000 gallons, making it one of the largest whiskey producers in Dublin. Its single pot still whiskey was sold under the D.W.D. brand. In the late 1880s the company merged with two other Dublin distillers, Marrowbone Lane and Thomas Street, to form the Dublin Distillers Company.

Like the rest of the Irish whiskey industry, the distillery suffered badly through the early twentieth century as it lost markets to U.S. Prohibition and the Anglo-Irish trade war of the 1930s. Production wound down over these decades, and the company was voluntarily liquidated in 1941, having by then received only a limited wartime export licence. The remaining assets were finally sold off in October 1946.

Quick Facts

• Region: Dublin
• Founded: 1873
• Owner: Dublin Distillers Company (historic; distillery long closed)
• Status: Closed
• Stills: 4 pot stills

Closure & Legacy

Jones Road Distillery ceased production in 1941 amid the broader collapse of the Irish whiskey industry, and its remaining stock and equipment were sold off by 1946. The site later fell into disuse before its distinctive industrial buildings were redeveloped in 2003 into a residential complex known as the "Distillery Lofts," which still stands on Jones Road today. Original D.W.D. bottlings are exceptionally rare; as of the 2010s, only a couple of authenticated bottles from the distillery were known to survive, making any surviving example a significant find for collectors of historic Irish whiskey.