Old Bushmills Distillery

The Old Bushmills Distillery claims to be the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world, with a licence dating to 1608 — though the distinction between licensed and unlicensed distilling in 17th-century Ireland is somewhat blurry. What is not in doubt is that the distillery has been producing Irish whiskey continuously since the 1780s, making it one of the oldest in continuous operation.

Tours run throughout the day and take about an hour, walking through the production process from malting through distillation to maturation in the bond warehouses. The whiskey is triple-distilled from malted barley using pot stills and matured in a mix of bourbon and sherry casks. The tour ends in the tasting room where you work through the main expressions.

The village of Bushmills itself is pleasant, and the River Bush runs through it. The distillery is 3 km from the Giant's Causeway visitor centre and makes an obvious pairing — the narrow-gauge tourist railway between the two used to link them, and a modern version still runs in summer.

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The distillery's licence dates to 1608, granted by King James I — making it the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world, predating its Scottish rivals by a considerable margin. The licence was issued partly because the local spring water, filtered through basalt from the same geological formation as the Giant's Causeway, was considered exceptionally pure. Irish whiskey uses a triple-distillation process rather than the Scottish double-distillation, which is why Bushmills is smoother and lighter than most Scotch.