Echlinville Distillery

When Shane and Lynn Braniff bought the Echlinville estate on the Ards peninsula in 2007, they set out to do something no one in Northern Ireland had done in over a century: distil under a new licence. The first casks were filled in 2013, and Echlinville grew into a genuine field-to-glass operation — barley grown and malted on the farm, distilled and matured on the same ground overlooking Strangford Lough. It makes gin and whiskey, sells from a shop on site, and remains family-owned, having funded its expansion itself rather than taking outside money. A working farm distillery of the old kind, brought back on the peninsula where the barley grows.