Diageo’s Roe & Co. Distillery is Pausing Production

There has been a lot of gloomy news regarding the state of the whiskey industry, and the spirits market overall, over the past year. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a post-pandemic course correction that will soon establish a new normal, or a downward spiral that is the result of tariff wars, over-saturation, and young people turning from alcohol to THC or teetotaling. One sign of the slowing market has been the announcements of production pauses at distilleries around the world, and while the corporate line is that these are temporary steps towards efficiency, it’s starting to look like a meaningful trend.

The latest example concerns Roe & Co., Diageo‘s Irish whiskey distillery located near the company’s Guinness brewery in Dublin. Roe & Co. first opened in 1757, and by the late 1800s it was making a massive amount of whiskey. It ultimately closed in 1923, but was revived in 2017 by Diageo to take the place of the much larger Bushmills in its portfolio, which it sold off a few years before that. The distillery has been making whiskey on a limited scale, as well as sourcing and blending whiskey for its various expressions, but that phase seems to over for now. I reached out to Diageo for comment, and received a carefully worded corporate response: “In order to optimize resources and support the sustainable future growth of our business, we have made the decision to put an extended pause on distillation at the Roe & Co Distillery. The Roe & Co visitor Center will remain open to the public, and we will continue to blend and package Roe & Co to meet existing and new consumer demand using existing inventory.” A source who is familiar with the brand says that the pause is set to last for a year, and there will be periodic reviews to figure out what the future will hold.

Another Irish distillery that announced a production pause this past spring is Midleton, where major brands like Jameson, Redbreast, and Green Spot are produced. You know the drill: A statement at the time said that the halt was so that the distillery could be “agile with our production cycles” and that whiskey making would resume this summer. We reached out to the distillery’s owner, Pernod Ricard, to find out if that has happened yet, but have not heard back. Tullamore D.E.W., owned by William Grant & Sons (The Balvenie, Glenfiddich) also announced that it was shutting down its stills, and the small Dublin distillery Dublin Liberties stopped making whiskey in May.

American producers have been affected as well. In addition to laying off workers and selling its cooperage, Brown-Forman (owner of Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve) closed its Glenglassaugh scotch distillery earlier in the year. In March, Diageo announced that it was pausing production at its carbon-neutral distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky, which opened in 2021 to supplement production of Bulleit Bourbon at the main Shelbyville distillery. “Every year we run standard temporary slowdowns or shutdowns across our operations to support our efficiency and productivity goals,” said a spokesperson at the time, going on to say that distilling and filling barrels would resume in June (we reached out to a rep to see if production had resumed, but have not heard back). And as we reported last fall, MGP in Indiana said it would scale back whiskey production this year.

Even so, there has been news about new contract distilling operations opening, or at least press releases have been sent out that say they will soon. In March, I spoke to someone who has worked in the American whiskey industry for many years on background, and he put it like this: “There’s a lot of press releases out there, there’s chest thumping and bravado in this business, and a lot of it’s bullshit. The demand is just not there on the new fill side of the ledger right now.” He believes that no one really wants to buy new fill (newly distilled) whiskey from a contract distiller right now when there is so much aged whiskey for around the same price. And overall, while he does see some softening in the American whiskey market, he believes it’s cyclical and not structural, and will sort itself out in the next 12 to 18 months.

So where does this leave leave us, and what does it all mean? It’s hard to get a straight answer from corporate communications teams, perhaps understandably so, but overall these production pauses do not seem to be good signs, and support the theory that the spirits market has indeed softened considerably. It remains to be seen if this is part of a cycle and not an implosion, but we’ll continue to cover any major shutdowns in the coming months.