Established in 2015, Chapelgate’s bonded rackhouse is the only one of its kind in Ireland. It is styled after a traditional Dunnage house but also takes inspiration from the maturation houses of Kentucky and France. It has a southerly facing aspect and windows ensuring that the warm temperature allows for continuous maturation. The floor is nothing but clay earth with a gravel screed. This helps to naturally maintain humidity levels within the rackhouse. It is small in scale, ensuring that the sleeping whiskey benefits from the wild fluctuations in barometric pressure and temperature of the Atlantic micro climate. Every cask is hand-racked on the bilge, which means on their sides. This is a practice that totally died out in Ireland; somewhere along the way, multinationals chose to vertically pallet their whiskey as its makes better economic sense. We believe that our whiskey will benefit from the extra contact with both heads of the barrel allowing for deeper flavour extraction from the wood. Only time will tell.