History
Origins
Wales has a long history of alcohol production, but distillation appears not to have begun until the Middle Ages. There are claims that the first evidence of stills in Wales dates to the 4th century CE, and that "The Great Welsh Warrior" Reaullt Hir is said to have distilled chwisgi from braggot brewed by the monks of Bardsey Island in 356 CE. These monks then allegedly developed the art of distilling further. However, the name "Reaullt" is a High Medieval loanword from Anglo-Norman French and would not have been used before the 11th century CE, making this claim of whisky-making on Bardsey Island in the 4th century unlikely.
Fermentation but not distillation is mentioned in the medieval Welsh stories of The Mabinogion, which dates from the 12th–13th centuries and is based on earlier oral traditions. A 16th century manuscript of the also much earlier 6th century Tales of Taliesin mentions distillation at the end of its "Mead Song", although mead is a fermented beverage.[citation needed]
Decline
The manufacture of whisky in Wales declined during the 19th century, with the commercial development of liquor discouraged by the rise of the temperance movement. The last notable distillery – The Welsh Whisky Distillery Company – was established by R. J. Lloyd Price in 1887 at Frongoch. However, the company was not a success. It was sold in 1900 to William Owen of Bala for £5000, and liquidated in 1910.
Revival
Entrepreneurs attempted to revive distillation in the country in the 1990s. The first attempts entailed bottling Scottish blends in Wales as "Welsh whisky", but a lawsuit by Scotch distillers ended the enterprise. In 2000 The Welsh Whisky Company – now known as Penderyn – was founded, with a distillery built at Penderyn in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Production commenced in 2000 and the finished product went on sale in 2004, the first whisky commercially produced in Wales for a century. This was followed in 2016 by Dà Mhìle distillery near Llandysul in west Wales bottling its first whisky, an organic single grain whisky.[citation needed]
In 2017, with two distilleries actively making and marketing whisky, Wales was officially recognised as having a whisky industry under European Union legislation. By February 2020 two more distilleries had begun operations. The Aber Falls distillery in Abergwyngregyn, Gwynedd commenced production in late 2017 and released its first whisky in 2021 after delaying the launch due to coronavirus. And in 2020 the Coles distillery produced the third single malt whisky in Wales at Llanddarog in Carmarthenshire, making it the fourth distillery to begin production and the third to release whisky onto the market.
As of July 2023 Welsh whisky was available in 45 countries, with the total value of exports forecast to be £23m that year.[needs update]
