Another new Irish whiskey brand has landed in off-licence stores, Grace O’Malley Blended Irish Whiskey. It’s the brainchild of Mayo man Stephen Cope, who used to run Lir Chocolates until that business found a new owner in 2015.

Unlike many of the other whiskey newcomers, Cope has gone down the ‘virtual whiskey’ route, eschewing a distillery build to buy the whiskey stock from John Teeling’s Great Northern Distillery.

Finished whiskey taste comes from the maturation barrels, which Cope and his colleagues select, and then the blend or mix. In charge of maturation and finishing of the Grace O’Malley spirits is Paul Caris, who previously helped develop the boutique Citadelle gin range in France.

The Grace O’Malley’s initial market entry was a €100 ‘Dark Char & Rum Cask Limited Edition’, and the Blended bottle is targeting the mainstream, with a price point of €40. There’s also a gin while a rum is planned too, along with several more variants of the main Grace O’Malley whiskey brand.

No matter how good a niche whiskey brand tastes, it will struggle without effective marketing. That’s why Cope turned to Berlin entrepreneurs Stefan Hansen and Hendrick Melle, who have a two-thirds stake in the venture. According to Cope, the capex commitment to date is circa €2m, both for finished stock bought from Great Northern and new whiskey stock laid down in Dundalk.

In Association with

“Stefan and Hendrick come from a PR background and specialise in brand building,” says Cope. “For instance they buy dog food made in Ireland and sell it in Germany as ‘Irish Pure’. They are not venture capitalists as such; they develop brands and that’s what really locked us in.

“They have brought a much more ambitious plan to the table. It’s a very simple model. We have given the operations side of the business to the people who know how to do it best. We are putting our energy into bringing the brand to the market, with a really good product behind it.”

Though the model may be simple, the execution isn’t. “Whiskey is a complex industry from setting up licences, to Revenue arrangements and legals. We have spent a lot of money protecting the brand in various countries and that slowed us down. It’s an interesting world to be in compared to just basic retail, but we are getting there.”

Photo: Stephen Cope (centre) with Grace O’Malley partners Hendrick Melle (left) and Stefan Hansen