Discover Tipperary Distillery’s field-to-bottle approach with founder Jennifer Nickerson, followed by a tasting of five to six distinctive whiskeys.
Jennifer Nickerson, founder of Tipperary Distillery, shares her journey from growing up in Scotland’s whisky landscape to moving to a farm in Grange, outside Clonmel, and establishing her own distillery.
Hear about Tipperary Distillery’s field-to-bottle approach, from growing their own barley to distillation and maturation, and discover how each stage influences the whiskey in your glass.
The talk will be followed by a tasting of five to six distinctive samples and an interactive Q&A, accompanied by atmospheric jazz guitar by Liam O'Reilly
Doors open at 5pm
Jennifer Nickerson’s connection to the whiskey industry began before she could even walk or talk. The daughter of a Scotch whisky distiller, her childhood was spent moving between the small villages nestled right beside the distilleries her father managed. Family lore claims that as a fussy baby, the fumes from the whiskey when the warehouse doors were opened helped to lull her to sleep. Thus Jennifer’s lifelong passion for whiskey was born!
When she entered university to study Business and Accounting, it was only natural that she wrote her thesis on the Scotch whisky industry. However, her professional journey initially took a detour into finance and Jennifer spent seven years with KPMG, training as a chartered accountant and tax advisor, eventually rising to Associate Director in their tax department in Ireland.
The turning point came when Jennifer and her now-husband, Liam Ahearn, began discussing the idea of building a distillery that used the premium barley from Liam’s sixth-generation family farm to create a genuine, field-to-bottle Irish whiskey.
In 2020, Tipperary Boutique Distillery officially opened its own craft distillery on the lands of Ballindoney Farm in County Tipperary. Every step of their production process embodies a strict single-estate ethos: the barley is grown on-site, the spirit is
cut with local farm spring water and the whiskey is distilled and matured right on the land.
Today, Tipperary Boutique Distillery is a globally recognised, award-winning brand exporting premium, terroir-driven whiskeys—including their signature Watershed, Homegrown Barley and their recent award winning ‘The 80’ Irish Apple Brandy releases—to Europe, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.
