Cahersiveen is a medium sized village on the Wild Atlantic Way in Co Kerry, famous for being the birthplace of Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell. However, a Kerry woman who shares his surname has a vision for Cahersiveen to be known for more than just its history. 

June O’Connell decided to swap a life of law for a life of pot distilling gin and whiskey around four years ago. Before this, she was a lawyer with leading firm William Fry and then chose to work for herself as a corporate lawyer for a decade while raising her four children. During this time, all of her clients worked in business. Although this seems like it may have influenced O’Connell to go and start her own venture, she says that running a business was something her and her husband spoke about doing for quite some time. The challenge was coming up with the right idea. 

“I think it’s a really good idea to do things on purpose. I might decide to leave opportunities behind on purpose, but do it on purpose. You live somewhere on purpose,” O’Connell says. 

With this attitude, O’Connell and her business partner and husband, Pat Cooney, were certain about two things. First, they wanted their business to have a legacy and be a space where their children could get involved and gain experience from working in it. Secondly, no matter what they chose to do, their business would have to be strongly linked to Munster as Cooney is from Cork while O’Connell’s home is Cahersiveen. Indeed, O’Connell’s mother jokingly describes the couple as being in a ‘mixed marriage.’

“Everyone expects this very tall Arab to walk into a room when she says mixed,” June jokes.

O’Connell still has close ties to her home and said her husband also has a “grá” for the place so they decided to look at business opportunities in Kerry. They thought about maybe opening a small shop. Then O’Connell decided to go down the route of producing a premium product, and when it comes to Ireland there are three premium products according to her: Castles, golf and whiskey. 

“We had a rural story to sell,” says O’Connell. “It has to be a premium product, otherwise you can’t compete.”

O’Connell chose to go into the whiskey business, targeting specifically the pot stilling whiskey business as it is has Geographical Indication (GI) protection since 2014, making it a more sought after premium product. Having GI protection means that whatever a manufacturer is making, the product possess qualities or a reputation that are isolated to the place where it’s made.

However, good whiskey needs years of distilling before it can be sold. It is a time intensive and costly undertaking. This was not lost on O’Connell who decided to make her own craft gin, which is quicker to create and sell, while she got her whiskey business off the ground.

June O’Connell measuring the different ingredients she uses for her gin while in the gift shop area of the Skellig Six18 Visitor Centre

Four years on from deciding to go into the alcohol distilling trade, O’Connell and Cooney are making their craft gin, Skellig Six18 (inspired by the number of steps to the top of Skellig Michael) in their distillery in Cahersiveen. The gin, created through with a mixture of various local botanicals, can be bought now at €50 per bottle or €7 per glass in various establishments from Michelin star restaurant Chapter One in Dublin to Harp, Cahersiveen’s nightclub. 

Creating the product

O’Connell and her business partners did not have any background in the food or drinks industry but they knew they wanted everything about their product to be central to Kerry and the west of Ireland. Therefore they sought the advice of several others to help expand their business.

One of their advisers was head chef of Michelin star restaurant Chapter One Ross Lewis. He helped them choose the botanicals that would create the gin. Nearly all of which are locally sourced in Kerry. These include the yarrow plant and dillisk which O’Connell says gives the gin that extra “umph.”

What the product came in seemed to be just as important for O’Connell as what it was made from. They bought the rights to a painting by Cork artist Cormac O’Leary which is on the label of every bottle of Skellig Six18 gin. They decided to create their own bespoke gin glasses too.

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Despite the beautiful scenery in Cahersiveen, other Kerry locations such as Dingle, Tralee and Killarney draw in many of the tourists heading to that side of Ireland. Others may just drive through Cahersiveen to get to Portmagee, the village where you can get a boat out to the iconic Skellig Michael where scenes from the latest Star Wars franchise were filmed. Unfortunately, Cahersiveen is not known for having a famous dolphin, hosting a beauty pageant or for having castles. It is not the easiest to get to either. That is why when you arrive, everyone is so keen to know what you are doing there. 

I said I was there to talk to June O’Connell about her new distillery which is also becoming a visitor centre. The response from everyone was the same. Everyone commented on why her business is great for the community and the promotion of Cahersiveen. One taxi woman said that having something like O’Connell’s distillery in Cahersiveen will bring in tourism that is far more valued than it is in the likes of Dublin because those tourists will filter into other local businesses during their time in the village. 

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Just outside the village is, what looks like a warehouse at the moment, Cooney and O’Connell’s distillery – painted a royal blue with their logo on the top of it. The 25,833sq ft distillery is difficult to miss, even if the driver is distracted by the mesmerising views of the Ring of Kerry that the distillery looks out on. 

The building used for the distillery was once a sock manufacturing factory called Wilson Socks, where Pat Sugrue was chief finance officer. The building was left vacant since 2003 and its use was at the discretion of Sugrue. After meeting O’Connell and Cooney, Sugrue decided to become their business partner and third co-founder. The distillery had a home. 

Pat Sugrue and June O’Connell in front of their copper gin pot still. Photo: Cait Caden.

When asked why he decided to enter into a partnership with O’Connell and Cooney, Sugrue said that he knew they would take this to completion and that getting involved with this venture was “a great opportunity to back passion and vision.”

When I asked if he was passionate about whiskey or gin before the partnership he said: “I’m passionate now.” 

When it comes to community, O’Connell believes in the value of creating competition amongst businesses in the local area. She has a pop-up shop in the centre of Cahersiveen which sells the gin from the distillery. The shop was once owned by the local pharmacist, who is now a business partner of O’Connell and lets O’Connell use the vacant premises rent free. O’Connell spoke of the joy she got when doing up the pop-up shop so that those nearby may feel the urge to improve the fronts of their business as well. 

The ‘Alan Kelly License’ and EIIS

O’Connell, Cooney and Sugrue, the three co-founders of Skellig Six18, have mainly bootsrapped the business and dug a total of €1.25 million out of their own pockets to put into the business thus far. The microdistillery itself is worth €10 million.

They are looking to raise €3 million through the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS). O’Connell says this is ideal for their business as it allows them to make their gin and go to market with it, which they are currently doing. They can then use the money they get from the scheme to get started on creating their whiskey. They have already begun this process in 2020 by getting their bespoke Italian copper distilling pots installed. These are much bigger than the 500l gin ones. 

“You won’t get EIIS until you show what you have,” says O’Connell.

The three founders also decided to make the distillery into a visitor centre, which will also be a gin school, which they hope will help generate even more revenue while distilling the whiskey.

With years of experience working in a factory and manufacturing, Sugrue said he was surprised that people are interested in coming in and seeing how a product is made.

He reflected back at a time when the former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds wanted to come into Wilson Socks to see how the manufacturing process was done and he wasn’t allowed in. Sugrue joked that it would be like giving away your business secrets. Now however, he and his business partners are building a business on doing exactly that.

The visitor centre will provide a tour of the distillery where you will watch a video on the background to the business. Then you will be brought into the actual distillery where you will be able to see the bespoke copper gin and whiskey distilling systems. There will also be a gift shop where you can buy the alcohol produced in the distillery, custom made glasses and clothes (including socks as a nod to the history of the distillery) by local designers such as Paul Galvin the former Kerry GAA player. 

Visitors will be able to buy the alcohol on the premises of the distillery due to the Intoxicating Liquor (Breweries and Distilleries) Bill 2016, otherwise known as ‘The Alan Kelly License,’ according to O’Connell as it was the Labour TD who pushed for this legislation. Before this Bill, it was illegal for microbreweries and microdistilleries to sell their alcoholic products on site. This Bill enables distilleries such as Skellig Six18 to keep more of their margins. 

Skellig Six18 is the second distillery in Ireland to get this license, and the first to get it in Kerry, according to O’Connell.

They are hoping to have the visitor centre open for business by March 2020. Before then though, some work still needs to be done such as demolishing and rebuilding the front of the building as it was erected in 1979 and is no longer fit for purpose. Instead, they are thinking of putting in more glass in the front which will allow visitors to take in the scenery of the Kerry coast.

Currently, the distillery employs six people but will aim to increase that by around 24 people by the time the distillery is fully open.

Plans going forward

Besides getting their whiskey off the ground, O’Connell and her other co-founders are speaking with Enterprise Ireland to get advice and investment so they can develop the business further. Unlike many other start-ups they are going to Enterprise Ireland at the end of their initial setting up process.

They are also currently looking to partner with food sellers and manufacturers as O’Connell describes her gin as a “food gin.” She is in talks with some players in the food market such as Skellig chocolates. Again, wanting to promote local business.

The focus for 2020 is to officially start distilling their GI protected pot still whiskey which they aim to go to market with by 2024. The whiskey part of the distillery will have the capacity for six casks per day. O’Connell aims to produce around 33,000 cases a year.