‘A global phenomenon’: Irish whiskey makers eye Gen Z to build upon a decade of growth

In a new ad featuring actors Colin Jost and Michael Che, Jost shows off a dark green suit he’s wearing and tells his Saturday Night Live costar that he’s ready to celebrate the beloved tradition of “St. Patrick’s Eve.”



“Colin, you literally just made it up,” Che responds.



Well, actually, the marketing team at Jameson did. And why? “The sweet spot for us in any given year is a Saturday St. Patrick’s Day,” says Conor McQuaid, chairman and CEO of Jameson maker Pernod Ricard. But in 2024, leap year pushed the popular Irish holiday—which is always celebrated on March 17—to a Sunday.



Fortunately, that’s where the bad luck ends for the Irish.







Last year, nearly 4.7 million 9-liter cases of Irish whiskey were sold in the United States, an increase of 92% over the past decade, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. The number of distilleries has grown from just 4 in 2010 to more than 40 today, propelling a winning streak that’s made Irish whiskey the fastest-growing spirits category globally.



The U.S. market accounts for about half of Irish whiskey sales, but growth is also coming from China, India, and Nigeria. Pernod Ricard’s Irish Distillers, Proximo’s Bushmills, and Amber Beverage Group have unveiled multimillion-dollar projects to boost capacity in recent years. “This has become a global phenomenon,” says McQuaid.



“If you look at the Irish whiskey category, it’s getting both wider in the number of distilleries, but also deeper in terms of a wider range of whiskey expressions coming out,” says Alex Conyngham, cofounder of Slane Irish Whiskey, which is owned by Jack Daniel’s liquor giant Brown-Forman.



[Photo: Slane Irish Whiskey]



Sales of Irish whiskey are still strongest in the first three months of the year, Conyngham says, noting, “That’s going to be very important for the future growth of the category. Nobody wants to just be pigeonholed into one part of the year.”



To April and beyond



Jameson has been working to extend seasonality of Irish whiskey while also unveiling new offerings that may lure in a nontraditional Irish whiskey drinker. Those launches include ready-to-drink canned Jameson and an orange-flavored whiskey. “It’s got a much broader appeal throughout the year,” McQuaid says.



In recent years Bushmills, the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery, has rebranded the whiskey’s packaging and ramped up innovation with new expressions like the 12-year-old single malt. “We see a consumer who is a little bit tired of Scotch single malt and they want to see or try something different,” says Lander Otegui, chief marketing officer of Proximo, which bought Bushmills in 2015 and made a $75 million investment in the distillery over the past five years.



“We felt that Irish whiskey—it’s smooth, it’s approachable, and that’s fine,” says Jack Teeling, managing director of Teeling Whiskey Co. “But what else can we do?”



Teeling has sought different dimensions of flavor, experimenting with around 80 different whiskey casks that range from chinquapin to oak trees from Portugal and Sweden. Teeling says it’s a delicate balancing act: He wants to extract flavors from the wood that the whiskey is aged in, but not so much that the underlying flavor of the liquor is lost.



One challenge Irish whiskey purveyors acknowledge is that they still haven’t quite figured out how to promote the category at the bar. There’s an ongoing perception that Irish whiskey is too delicate to hold up in complex cocktails. American-made whiskey, on the other hand, is known for spicy, woodier flavors that can blend well with citrus.



“I would suggest that consumers take a chance on St. Patrick’s Day—go into their local bar and try something new within Irish whiskey,” Teeling says.



[Photo: Teeling Whiskey Company]



Cocktails that feature Irish whiskey range from espresso martinis and Irish coffees to Manhattans, highballs, the Tipperary, and even the simple whiskey and ginger ale. But nothing has stuck like tequila’s mighty margarita.



“We tend to design our whiskey to be drunk from the bottle because in Ireland we don’t tend to get high temperatures, so we don’t necessarily need it to be chilled,” says Eric Ryan, distiller of Powers, another Irish whiskey made by Pernod Ricard. Ryan has visited bars across the U.S. this month, promoting a Manhattan as the perfect Irish whiskey cocktail.



Powers also took inspiration from American whiskey makers when it debuted a rye expression last year, which is meant to bring yet another new flavor dimension to Irish whiskey that is best served in a cocktail.



[Photo: Powers]



“Today, you see Scotch menus that are very, very strong and Irish whiskey menus are very, very slim,” Proximo’s Otegui says. “They’re the last page and they’re not very prevalent.”



Roe & Co., a brand owned by Diageo, has worked with bartenders nationwide to add Irish whiskey cocktails to menus. “We know that the younger millennials and younger consumers overall love exploration,” says Gustavo Salguero, senior brand manager at Roe.



And while trends show that Gen Zers are drinking less alcohol than prior generations, they do tend to favor spirits like Irish whiskey over beer and wine. “I’m really encouraged by the Gen Z predisposition to the cocktail culture,” says McQuaid. “I think the future is bright as Gen Z comes of age.”