A Ban Costs World Markets
Prohibition and Ireland's Decline
Around 1900, Irish whiskey was the best-selling spirit in the world, with more than thirty distilleries around Dublin alone. Sixty years later, only two remained. A lost war, a rejected technological advance, and a law in the USA were enough to topple a world power.
Ireland's Lost Lead
At the end of the 19th century, many considered Irish whiskey the superior whiskey. It was distilled in large pot stills, triple-distilled rather than double-distilled as was usual in Scotland, resulting in a particularly smooth and pure spirit. Dublin was the center of a proud industry with brands sought after throughout the British Empire and in the USA. When a royal commission investigated in 1908 what could actually be called whisky, Irish distillers fiercely defended their traditional pot still method. They opposed the lighter grain whisky produced with the Coffey still, which they considered inferior.
The commission ruled against them: grain whisky and blends made from it could henceforth also be called whisky. Irish distillers who insisted on their pure, more expensive pot still tradition thereby missed the trend toward the milder, cheaper blended whisky with which Scotland was conquering world markets at the time. This decision had effects lasting decades, as drinkers' tastes worldwide shifted toward mild and light, while Ireland held on to its heavier style.
War and Trade Embargo
The Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921 and the subsequent partition of the island hit the whiskey industry directly. Factories stood idle, trade routes were disrupted, and political uncertainty scared off investors. The new border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland also cut through established trade routes over which whiskey had been transported for decades. In the trade conflict that followed between the new Irish state and Britain in the 1930s, London imposed high tariffs on Irish goods. This effectively locked Irish whiskey out of the vast markets of the British Empire, which had until then been its most important customers.
At precisely this moment, Ireland urgently needed a new market to make up for the lost Empire markets. Continental Europe offered no adequate substitute at the time, since other spirits, along with wine and beer, dominated the market there. Instead, the largest remaining export market, the USA, collapsed at the same time, for an entirely different reason. This reason would also shape American whiskey history for decades to come.
American Prohibition Strikes Twice
From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition in the USA banned the production, sale, and transport of alcohol almost entirely. For Irish whiskey, this was a heavy blow. Irish Americans in East Coast cities were among the most loyal customers of brands from the old homeland, and this very market vanished practically overnight. Scottish blends partly made up for the loss via smuggling routes through Canada and the Caribbean, an organized business from which the Bronfman family, among others, profited handsomely.
Irish distilleries had hardly any such smuggling networks, and their market in the USA largely collapsed. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, American drinkers had long since grown accustomed to other spirits. Irish whiskey found it difficult to make its way back into the glasses it had once been nearly synonymous with, and had to laboriously win back customers.
From World Market Leader to Two Distilleries
The combination of lost Commonwealth markets, the collapse in the USA, and the insistence on a more expensive, outdated production method caused the Irish whiskey industry to shrink for decades. From once more than 160 distilleries across the island in the 19th century, only two remained by the 1970s. These two operations eventually merged into a single company just to survive.
Only decades later, from the 1990s and especially from the 2010s onward, did Irish whiskey experience a remarkable renaissance with many new distilleries. Old names like Kilbeggan and Tullamore came back to life, joined by dozens of entirely new operations across the country. But by then, the story had long since shifted to another continent, where whiskey emerged under conditions all its own.