3. A Farm-First Approach

A terroir-driven approach to whisky making begins with the land - the fields and farms that give Waterford Distillery its barley. It's in these fields that the growers and their families maximize the flavour-potential of their barley crop. Aided and advised by Grace O’Reilly, Ireland’s only distillery-employed agronomist, growers follow a different process to growing and harvesting.   In this episode of Terroir-Driven: The Waterford Whisky podcast we’ll meet growers who have farmed their land for generations, we’ll learn what it means to them to be part of Waterford Distillery’s approach and we’ll follow barley’s journey from sowing to harvesting. 

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.