Yahoo News 'It's in my DNA' says master whiskey maker behind planned new distillery in Co Derry beauty spot
A master distiller planning to set up a new whiskey distillery in one of Northern Ireland's most picturesque locations has said whiskey-making is in his DNA.
Darryl McNally, whose family owned a distillery in Limavady in the late 1800s, has been granted planning approval to build a new distillery in Magilligan for his 'Limavady Whiskey' brand that can already be found on shelves in countries around the world.
McNally, an industry veteran who said he "worked my way up" to become a master distiller at Bushmills after joining in 1998, told Belfast Live there was "just something not complete in my life" despite building the Dublin Liberties Distillery after leaving the world famous Co Antrim company in 2015.
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He is now looking forward to getting the new distillery in the spectacular, seaside location of Magilligan in Co Derry on his father's farm.
The £8million investment was given the green light from planners in the Causeway Coast and Glens earlier this week.
Mr McNally told Belfast Live he sees the new distillery - with a production capacity of a quarter-of-a-million bottles a year - as a continuation of hundreds of years of heritage.
"I started bushmills in 1998 and worked my way up to master distiller and then I left bushmills in 2015 and went to build a distillery in Dublin called the Dublin Liberties Distillery," he said.
"And I launched the Dead Rabbit Irish whiskey, The Dubliner Irish whiskey and the Dublin Liberties Irish whiskey.
"And when I had the distillery all built, you know, there was still something. You think 'great, job done', but there was just something not complete in my life."
He continued: "So I thought right, the Limavady brand where I was born and bred. There was an old distillery dating back to 1750. My family owned it, in 1880, on my mother's side - the McLaughlins.
"My brother was a distiller in Bushmills. I was a master distiller.
"It was almost as if, you know, it was running through your DNA and you were nearly sort of put on this planet to do it.
And it was almost as if the family was haunting you to bring Limavady back to life."
He continued: "So I formed a company, got a bit of backing from a big American company to do distribution in America and what not.
"To be honest, launching the Limavady brand was all well and good - I think we launched it in August 2021 - but you need a home. You need a history, a heritage, a place, to justify the brand. If you say you source the liquid - which we do at the minute - it doesn't have the same appeal, you know, to consumers, etcetera.
"So you have to build a distillery."
On the location, in an area of outstanding natural beauty below the iconic Benevanagh mountain where Lough Foyle meets the Atlantic, Mr McNally said: "My dad had a farm in Magilligan. We thought, you know, sitting below the mountain there where you have the whole Game of Thrones link to the American market and all that good stuff.
"So we went about trying to get plan permission and it took a lot longer than, than we really expected.
"But we said to hell with it, we'll go on ahead and launch the brand and hopefully in the meantime, we'll get the distillery as we go."
He continued: "So the distillery was thought about first, but just purely by the amount of time it took we went on ahead and launched the brand and that's now in Australia, South Korea, 34 states in the US. You know, we're trying to get to other new markets. We're in the UK, we're in Ireland, we're in France, we're in the Netherlands. So we're slowly ticking the box to get the brand more and more exposure.
"But, you know, we need a production facility and that's really what the distillery brings - and eventually, hopefully, we'll get a visitors center attached onto it as well so that we can tap into the sort of tourist destination with people coming to visit this part of the world."
On the history of whiskey-making in rural, coastal Co Derry, he said: "There's a fresh source of water, there's an age old history between the main Scottish distilleries in Islay and Campbelltown over there, you know, but the legal license was granted to Sir Thomas Phillips who lived in Limavady and built Newtown Limavady.
"The reason I'm using Magilligan is I want the distillery on my dad's land. It's very scenic, it's beautiful, but there's a source of water and all coming from Benevenagh Mountain.
But there's a very close link with Dal Riada, the whole sort of north coast of Ireland where, actually, the Irish owned that part of Scotland that was famous for making whiskey.
And although there only was licenses granted in 1608, there was whiskey being made in this area for years and years and years."
He continued: "I think in Benevenagh Mountain alone there was something like 200 illicit stills back in the day. So the area is steeped in the history of whiskey-making.
My family, landowners from Magilligan, actually funded the purchase of the Limavady distillery bag in 1880.
So there's a huge history of growing barley in that area for it, etcetera. So I want to grow the barley and around that special micro-climate that's in Magilligan."
He added: "And I want that to be close to the distillery. Plus, then, the co-products coming out of the distillery of wet grains and pot ale that has to be fed to animals. We'll be feeding it straight onto the land and we'll have a lot of happy cows and pigs."
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