Thomas Street (George Roe & Co) Distillery — Dublin Single Malt Whisky

Thomas Street Distillery is an Irish whiskey distillery that stood on Thomas Street in Dublin 8, Ireland, opposite what is now Guinness's St James's Gate Brewery. It was founded in 1757 by Peter Roe and was closed by the mid-1920s after passing through the hands of the Roe family and the Dublin Distillers Company. At its Victorian peak it was the largest whiskey distillery in Europe, and its windmill tower, St Patrick's Tower, still stands as one of Dublin's most recognisable historic landmarks.

History

Peter Roe bought an existing distillery on Thomas Street in 1757, laying the foundation for what would become George Roe & Co. The business passed to his son George Roe in the 1820s, who expanded it by merging it with a second family distillery on nearby Pimlico. To power the enlarged works, the Roes built a smock windmill on the site that was, at the time, the largest of its kind in Europe; the tower survives today as St Patrick's Tower, standing around 150 feet tall and topped with a blue copper cap and a weathervane depicting St Patrick.

Under George Roe, and later his nephews Henry and George Roe, the combined Thomas Street site grew to occupy roughly seventeen acres running down to the River Liffey. By 1887 George Roe & Co was producing around two million gallons of whiskey a year and had become the largest distillery in Europe, with significant exports to the United States, Canada and Australia. The family's wealth also left a lasting civic mark on Dublin: Henry Roe personally funded the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral and the building of its adjacent Synod Hall in the 1870s, at a cost equivalent to tens of millions of pounds today.

Like the other great Dublin distilleries, Thomas Street struggled as the 19th century closed. In 1889 the business joined the Dublin Distillers Company, a consolidation with other Liberties-area distillers formed to compete against cheaper Scotch blended whisky. The merger could not reverse the decline, and production at Thomas Street wound down through the 1910s and 1920s against a backdrop of Scotch competition, Irish political upheaval, and the approach of US Prohibition, a critical export market for Irish pot still whiskey.

Quick Facts

• Region: Dublin
• Founded: 1757
• Owner: George Roe & Co (Dublin Distillers Company from 1889)
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Whiskey production at Thomas Street ceased by 1926, and the Dublin Distillers Company was formally wound up in the 1940s. Guinness, whose St James's Gate brewery stood directly opposite, acquired the former distillery site in 1949 and absorbed much of it into its own brewing operations; St Patrick's Tower survived on what became Guinness property and remains standing today. Original bottlings from George Roe & Co are now extremely rare and highly sought after by collectors of historic Irish whiskey. In 2019, Diageo opened a new Roe & Co Distillery in a converted Guinness power station on Thomas Street, close to the original site, as a working tribute to George Roe's name and legacy.