Bushmills

Bushmills sits on the north Antrim coast a few miles from the Giant's Causeway. Its history rests on a licence to distil granted by James I to the district's governor, Sir Thomas Philips, in 1608 — the basis of the distillery's claim to be the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world. The Old Bushmills Distillery itself was registered in 1784.

Its single malt is triple-distilled from barley grown on the island of Ireland, and unpeated, using water from Saint Columb's Rill, a tributary of the River Bush. The stubbornness is the point. When a tax on malted barley pushed Irish distillers to mix unmalted grain into their mash — the tax dates from 1785 — Bushmills stayed with malt.

That continuity is what allows the releases it is now known for. In March 2025 it released Secrets of the River Bush at forty-six years old — drawn from two oloroso sherry butts filled in 1978 and left in Warehouse 8 until evaporation had reduced them to three hundred bottles, at 46.3% and undiluted. It is the oldest single malt Bushmills has released.