MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
HELEN SCULLY set up the Clonakilty Distillery with her husband Michael. They live in Clonakilty and have three children aged 25, 24 and 20.
WHEN I left school I did a secretarial course and then went to work in the insurance industry for 14 years. But when Michael and I got married, I had three children within five years of each other. My commute was over an hour each way so by the time we had our third child it was all a little bit too much.
We have a farm and I was looking after our accounts for that too. I stayed at home minding the children. I had been doing courses in accounting and computers at night and after a while I decided I wanted to try something different. So I enrolled in UCC for two years doing a Higher Diploma in coaching psychology.
Michael was working abroad in Warsaw for 14 years — he used to come home every second week but we decided we wanted a better quality of life together. He had a passion for whiskey so we decided to research making it. It was while we were at a craft distillery expo that I was having a look around and started to meet people from the gin side of things. So I decided I would give that a go.
I kayak a lot off the coast here and the Minke whales inspired the name. One day we were off the boat, fishing and we found some rock samphire which we fried up with our mackerel and it was amazing. That gave me the idea to use it in the gin as we grow it locally and it is a very unique botanical. The passion for me came from the fact that all the ingredients in Minke Gin are local.
We’ve been making it for six months and we are now looking to international markets for both the gin and Clonakilty Whiskey including Germany and the States.
When we were doing our research, we toured round a lot of the distilleries in Scotland. We wanted to attract tours and we realised they all had some kind of cafe or restaurant.
So while we were building our distillery, we decided to include a high-end bistro, The Whale’s Tail which just opened this year.
We have the distillery, an interpretive centre and a gin school where people can come and make their own gin and bring it home afterwards. I love it when people come in and tell me they have had a great experience — that makes it all worthwhile. INTERVIEW BY MAEVE QUIGLEY