Where We’re Going
All roads come back to Créatúr, a book about whiskey in Ireland and the heritage and the future of its protean tastes. It’s a book about the spirit’s place in living culture as a beverage made by real people out of raw materials. It’s a book about those people. It’s a book about those raw materials. It’s a book about drinking a little deeper from the well. And to fund its independent creation, we’ve set up a supporters’ community of likeminded spirits to share that liquid journey with us until mid 2026 (Whiskey Live Dublin).
Créatúr supporters become bottle owners in a shared maturing Olorosso cask of Boann single pot still, distilled from a once-off mash bill recipe uncovered in the National Library as part of Fionnán’s PhD on the history of Irish whiskey, and intended for bottling in the next four years. Upon publication in 2026, supporters will receive a signed copy of Créatúr with their names included as the project’s patrons. In the meantime, supporters are invited to participate in the Poor Créatúr Hedge school, an exclusive calendar of monthly online talks and in-person warehouse visits and events. Most of what we taste will come from direct warehouse cask pulls rather than anything you’re likely to see on a shelf. Lastly, as liquids emerge from the chapter projects, our distillery
friends will make these available for purchase to those who are supporters at the time of their release. Our first bottling, An Buachaill Caol Dubh poitín, was released just last month. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. But there’s more of them coming on the road to Créatúr’s writing.
The Road So Far
It’s been a rich few months. So far, with the help of our supporters we’ve been able to bring our distiller friends to visit libraries across Europe to revisit the key manuscripts of early distilling history and to reconnect with cousin spirits on the continent for a more wholistic understanding of Irish whiskey’s place in global spirits culture. We’ve been travelling around Ireland quite a lot.
We’ve been having chats and cooking up new liquid projects, allowing us to prepare the book’s early chapters. The book presales embedded into your support payment are an enormous help during this stage too. To date, our members have been hosted for special warehouse tastings at Boann Distillery and Two Stacks (along with an unofficial European spirits tasting at Pearse Lyons Distillery) and we’ve invited guest speakers from peatland scientist Dr. Mike Billett to UCC ethnomusicologist Dr. Pádraig Mac Aodhgháin to bring their specialist knowledge to our live events and online Hedge school talks.
When we cover a whiskey topic, we intend to dig deep. With Pádraig’s help, we uncovered a 1960s recipe for poitín in the Seán Ó Riada archive that we’ve since seen distilled by our friends at Killowen Distillery, creating our first Supporters-Exclusive bottling. We’ve more in the pipeline…
The Road Ahead
We’re off to high strength start but the next two years will see Créatúr, the cask, and the Hedge-school mature into something truly dear. From in-person events to online talks to more exclusive bottlings, we’ve a lot still planned for the road ahead. To date, roughly 60% of the crowdfunding cask has been accounted for and we intend to reward our supporters with the most in-depth tastings we can imagine. And we’re very imaginative.
If you are new to the project and interested in joining and taking part as a Créatúr Crowdfunding Supporter you can sign up here.
If you’re already a Supporter, thank you, we’ve a lot more coming in the future, if you think any of your colleagues, friends or family would be interested do let them know they can join up too…
Sláinte.
