Newry native Shane McCarthy went straight into working in financial services when he graduated from Queen’s University Belfast. His first stop in his career was Dublin. After that, he worked in Australia and New Zealand. Then he moved to New York where he got an internship with Parity Energy on Wall Street before getting involved in a fintech company Enfusion. But something wasn’t right.

McCarthy excelled in his career and even helped Enfusion expand into the UK during the three years he worked with the firm. Yet, despite his success and being able to travel all over the world with financial services, he wanted to pursue his passion instead.

“For me, it was just a continuous journey of unfulfillment. You were climbing a ladder and there was a yearning for something else,” said McCarthy.

“So, there was a bit of a catch 22 at least with do you stay and pursue this kind of journey with a finance company or are you going to follow your own heart and passion.”

That’s when he decided to go into the alcoholic beverage industry which ultimately led to him creating his own whiskey and, his latest project, whiskey in a can, which launched in recent months.

McCarthy and his business partners launched the Two Stacks whiskey product Dram in a Can. It is the first Irish whiskey to ever to be sold in a can.

“In the last year, it made sense for us to come out with whiskey in a can. It’s actually better for the liquid than whiskey in a bottle. We’ve seen it in craft beer and even in wine as well. You see some premium wines in a can,” said McCarthy.

“Our ethos is to get really good Irish whisky out to as many people as possible. And we thought we can do it in 100ml cans. And I don’t think there’s been massive disruption in the miniature market since Power’s Irish whiskey actually, where they put premium spirits into miniature bottles, which would have all been individually corked. That was maybe 150 years ago,” he adds.

After years of selling other people’s products with McCarthy’s first business enterprise, Irish Craft Beverages, McCarthy and his ICB partner Liam Brogan decided to become players in the alcoholic beverage market themselves and created Two Stacks Irish whiskey with another business partner Donal Lynch. Now, McCarthy has decided to move home from New York to put more of his time into Two Stacks.

The liquid was blended in the Great Northern Distillery, Ireland’s largest independent facility, and is aged and bottled in Killowen Distillery, co-founded by McCarthy, Brogan and Brendan Carty.

“That is all about giving the experience to the consumer and not cutting whiskey back to 40 per cent that people think it should be. You put it into the bottle and you let the consumers cut the whisky themselves the way people used to do,” says McCarthy.

The cans are 100ml or the equivalent of more than two standard bar pours. The liquid in the can is the exact same as what is in the Two Stacks bottles.

The Irish and European markets are the most important for Two Stacks right now, but McCarthy does say the brand has seen some success in the US market in the last year. Two Stacks Dram in a Can is already available in the US after its bottled variant had success there last year.

The Two Stacks founders broke into the US market after they had drinks with distributor High Road Spirits (HRS) in a bar in Japan during the Rugby World Cup.

Entering into the alcoholic beverages industry

It was when McCarthy was working with friends in a bar in Manhattan that something clicked for him. He said it was like being the “plastic Paddy”. He saw that people around the world love Irish bars and Irish people working bars, yet there was not a fair representation of alcoholic brands being served in these establishments.

“It’d be like going into an Italian and not actually getting Italian food. They would be pouring something like Guinness and a lot of them wouldn’t even. They’d pour US beers,” said McCarthy.

This realisation drove him to found the export platform Irish Craft Beverages, set up the B2B company six years ago and which he has run for six years while living in New York. This platform allows consumers around the world to access products from rural Irish producers that partner with ICB such as Dingle Distillery.

When asked if he would use ICB to distribute Two Stacks, McCarthy said: “The thing with Ireland Craft Beverages is we never distributed in Ireland or the domestic market. It was a concept completely set up for export. It’s an export platform for all of the rural Irish breweries and distilleries around the rest of the world.”

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McCarthy then saw it as a natural progression to set up his own distillery in Ireland which he did with his childhood friend Brendan Carthy and ICB business partner Liam Brogan. In 2017, they set up Ireland’s smallest licenced small-batch distillery up in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down.

The distillery was set up for less than €150,000. McCarthy, Brogan and Carty ploughed most of the money into their business and own 75 per cent of it, while friends and family also contributed small amounts of funding.

“We have been offered a lot of funding, especially for the distillery side of things. Irish whiskey seems to be a hot topic in the last year or two. But we’re trying to make it our own way for as long as possible,” said McCarthy. He adds that he and his business partners may seek funding for the distillery further into the business.

The trio were able to utilise their different skills when setting it up. Brogan was a chartered accountant before becoming involved with ICB and Killowen distillery and McCarthy’s previous experience enabled them to create the business model and handle the financial needs of the business. Carty trained as an architect before working on the distillery and subsequently, got the planning permission, drew up the plans and upcycled the farmhouse the distillery operates out of.

“There’s a lot of people that are setting up new distilleries and are ringing us a lot asking for help. It’s a balancing act. We want to help everyone, but some people can take advantage as well,” said McCarthy.