Wild AtlanticDistillery

Brothers-in-law Brian Ash and Jim Nash founded Wild Atlantic in 2019, on farmland at Aghyaran outside Castlederg, and set out to make the first whiskey distilled in the north-west of Ireland in a hundred years. The distillery makes gin while the whiskey ages, runs a gin school and tours, and is owned by the people who built it rather than a drinks group — Companies House lists Ash as the majority shareholder. West Tyrone is not where anyone expects a distillery, which is rather the point: a stubborn, independent operation putting the corner of the country it sits in into a bottle. Book the tour; the whiskey is worth waiting for.