E-Malt.com News article: Ireland: Irish whiskey changes can 'broaden' category

The public consultation into rules that govern Irish whiskey will finish on 4 September, which has received submissions from the Irish Whiskey Association (IWA) and Irish Whiskey Guild (IWG), The Spirits Business reported on August 14.

Changes sought for Irish whiskey’s technical file, published in 2014, include the mash bill for Irish pot still. As it stands, the recipe currently must contain a minimum of 30% malted barley, a minimum of 30% unmalted barley, and then only up to 5% of other grains.

The hope is to amend the ‘other grains’ allowance from 5% to 30%, but specified as oats, wheat and rye.

Other changes include removing references to oak casks in maturation, the words ‘currently non-peated’ from the pot still definition, and increasing the allowance of malted barley for grain Irish whiskey from 30% to 40%.

While Dingle Distillery hasn’t played around with the technical file or other options around pot still as much as some other Irish distilleries might have done, its managing director Elliot Hughes feels the changes would be a positive for the Irish whiskey industry and make the category a bit broader.

“It’s been discussed for a long time and a lot of distilleries have distilled products on the assumption that this goes through as well,” he told The Spirits Business.

“I think it benefits the category having a kind of broader church of different mash bill styles that we can look at.”

On whether the proposed updates find enough balance between tradition and innovation, Hughes noted distilleries such as Boann that are looking at reigniting old mash bills. “It’s funny in the sense that that probably is innovation, but it’s also reverting back to tradition as well. So I think that’s kind of almost one and the same in this context,” Hughes said.

He also highlighted the number of distilleries making pot still now, compared with 10 years ago. “There is the argument that the current technical file was written when the only real available pot still was from one distillery,” he said. “As more distilleries come in, different people come on board, and then with different ideas. So it’s not overly contentious.”

Other producers in Ireland are in agreement that there is enough balance between innovation and tradition in the proposed changes.

Brendan Carty, the founder of Kilowen, noted that innovation comes from tradition. “People often think innovation means inventing something new, but in Irish whiskey it’s often about rediscovering what our predecessors were already doing, before styles became artificially hegemonized outside of cultural evolution,” he said.

Shane McCarthy, the co-founder of Two Stacks, noted that “innovation should always be rooted in genuine provenance”, while David Elder of The Busker, added tradition was “already set and protected”.

“What we have now is a category that will encourage innovation, give flexibility but with the traditional methods in making whiskey,” Elder says.

For Irish whiskey’s future, if the changes do come through, McCarthy feels the category will have a “greater authenticity” and a “richer story to tell”.

“By embracing its own history, Irish whiskey becomes more distinctive on the global stage, offering consumers a broader and more genuine expression of what single pot still has always been,” he explained.

Hughes noted one caveat: “We just have to make sure that we don’t go too far and make it indistinguishable from what it previously was. But I don’t think we’re doing that in this instance.”

The consultation period for the Irish whiskey product specification, which began on 26 June, will close on 4 September at 4pm.


14 August, 2026