1. The Genesis of an Idea

Waterford Whisky has been years in the making. Before the establishment of the distillery and before terroir-driven spirit flowed from the stills on the banks of the River Suir, founder Mark Reynier spent a career in the wine and Scotch whisky world. Inspired by a different approach to the growing of vines and barley, Mark applied the insights gleaned in the years prior to his arrival in Waterford to the planning of a very different type of whisky distillery.   In this first episode of Terroir-Driven: The Waterford Whisky podcast, Mark Reynier opens up about the events that led him to Ireland’s South East and shares with host Barry Chandler how he set about building a new approach to whisky making from farm to bottle.   This episode takes us all the way back to the beginning - to the genesis of an idea and what it took to bring the idea of terroir-driven whisky to life.

Om Podcasten

Influenced by the world's greatest winemakers, Waterford Distillery obsessively brings the same intellectual drive, methodology and rigour to single malt whisky. But what does that actually mean? It means applying strict production criteria to Irish barley and whisky production. It means sourcing barley from individual Irish farms - some organic, some biodynamic. It means malting, fermenting, distilling and maturing those farm crops in complete isolation - from field to barrel. The distillery showcases the barley flavours derived from individual Irish farms, terroir by terroir, in its Single Farm Origin series. But the ultimate goal is to one day use these individual terroirs to produce world’s most unique, complex and compelling whisky. In this podcast series, the award-winning whisky communicator Barry Chandler has unfettered access to the distillery and its people, to break down each step of the production process from growing the barley to bottling the whisky so that you, the whisky fan, can understand about where flavour is created and what the possibilities are when a distillery chooses to obsessively explore that prime raw ingredient of single malt whisky: barley.