Skellig Six18 Distillery

The Atlantic wind carries salt and stories across the Skellig Coast, where County Kerry's wild edge meets the restless sea. Here, in 2019, Norma and Brian Cleary chose an abandoned dry-dock building in Cahersiveen as the unlikely birthplace of Ireland's newest whiskey pilgrimage.

The name tells the tale—Skellig Six18, honoring the 618 stone steps that seventh-century monks carved into Skellig Michael's unforgiving rock face. Those ancient Irish brothers climbed toward heaven with the same devotion the Clearys brought to resurrecting Ireland's liquid poetry, uisce beatha, in this weathered harbor town.

The former dry-dock speaks of Kerry's maritime soul—boats once rested here between journeys, just as whiskey now rests in oak between creation and communion. The building's industrial bones frame copper pot stills that gleam like beacons against stone walls, while beyond the windows, the Skellig Islands rise from the Atlantic like sleeping giants.

By summer 2020, the first new make spirit flowed from their stills, carrying the essence of this ancient land. The Clearys chose the traditional Irish path of pot still whiskey, honoring the methods that made Irish whiskey the world's most coveted spirit before history's cruel interruptions nearly silenced the island's distilleries forever.

Wild botanicals gathered from Kerry's untamed coast find their way into both whiskey and gin, each bottle holding the terroir of a place where mountain streams tumble toward the sea and peat bogs whisper of millennia past. The water itself rises from local sources, filtered through limestone and time, carrying minerals that will shape every drop for decades to come.

The International Spirits Challenge recognized something special here in 2022, awarding the distillery tour experience Double Gold—a testament to how the Clearys transform visitors into pilgrims, sharing not just process but passion.

In this corner of Kerry, where monks once sought transcendence through stone steps, a new generation climbs toward perfection through copper and craft. Each bottle that will emerge in years to come carries the promise of those 618 steps—that the most rewarding journeys demand both faith and persistence, and that sometimes the most sacred destinations hide in the most unexpected places.