A distillery for the west of Ireland?

Another distilling hopeful decloaked in the Sunday Business Post recently. It's the familiar story of a brand built on Cooley liquid that got chopped off at the knees when Beam took over.

Irish Fiddler Whiskey, Inishmore Irish Whiskey and Inishmore Irish Whiskey Liqueur have all been launched over the last 18 months. I took this family photo in the Celtic Whiskey Shop last December:

According to the Post, Colm Regan (owner of Zetland Country House Hotel in Galway) and Edward Cullen (I look forward to seeing what that does for my search traffic) are investing €2m in a big spirits play focused on the US. It will include gin, scotch, vodka and rum, so this is not entirely an Irish spirits story.

Redmond, however, is quoted as saying that the company has enough Irish whiskey in stock to sustain sales until their own distillery kicks in:

We have a feasibility study going on at the moment sussing out the possibility of building a distillery in the west of Ireland.

The west has been a bit of a blank spot until now, with rumours and announcements of distilleries only in the north, south and east of the island. But it sounds like we might get the chance now to sample whiskey from all four provinces of Ireland.