The consultation on the Irish Whiskey Technical File is to open in the coming weeks according to the Department of Agriculture. It will be open for two months. It was due to open in 2025, but was delayed.

Once complete the Department said it will “compile and conduct an assessment of the submissions”.

Responding to the Irish Farmers Journal’s query the Department said: “There is a requirement for an ‘opposition procedure’ to the proposed changes and updates to the product specification which will take eight weeks. If there are no substantial objections, the accepted amendments will be categorised as either ‘standard’ (national) amendments, with others considered ‘Union’ amendments which must be submitted to the EU [European] Commission for consideration and opposition.”

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Irish grain

One of the major issues farmers have with Irish whiskey production is the fact that no Irish grain is needed to produce Irish whiskey and while many whiskey producers do use Irish grain, many do not, with some using a mixture of Irish and imported and some blending whiskey produced from maize and barley.

The Irish Farmers Journal estimates that approximately 140,000t of maize is used to produce Irish whiskey in a number of distilleries. This whiskey does not need to be labelled in a different manner than other whiskey. It is simply known as Irish grain whiskey.

The Department noted that: “One of the issues that could be examined is whether imposing a requirement to use Irish grain in the production of Irish whiskey would be in accordance with EU Single Market principles

“There are no obstacles at present to prevent an operator in Ireland from producing an Irish whiskey product made solely of Irish grains and declaring as such on the product label. Currently some such products are already on the marketplace.

“The composition of Irish whiskey varies by each product, the ratios of each grain type used is a matter of commercial sensitivity for each producer and the Department does not hold this information.