Food Academy

Loch Measc

Drioglann Loch Measc- Loch Measc Distillery, Distilling small batch, quality spirits inspired by the wilds and rare beauty of Mayo.  

Producing award-winning spirits reflective of the rugged & beautiful mountains, lake and country side where it lies. The award winning Loch Measc Gin takes the surrounding countryside as its muse, and is made with Loch Measc water and wild flower botanicals, hand harvested with care each summer.  

“We use wild honeysuckle, fuchsia and elderflower which is foraged from the lake shore. As for the distilling itself, we use an ancient type of still, the Alembic Copper Pot Still, the design of which hails back to the dawn of distilling. While they may not be very sophisticated, they do produce wonderful spirit… slowly, and steadily!" 

“Our spirits are inspired by the wonderful combination of robustness and gentleness, of resilience and creativity in the people that surround Loch Measc. Our spirits are robust, flavorsome and a little bit wild.” 

While developing Loch Measc Gin, we needed to find some tough critics to help me get to the world class standard we aimed for. Ashford Castle, voted Best Hotel in the World, is right on our door step! When we thought the recipe was cracked, a bottle was taken over to the castle and their legendary bar manager, Noli Alngohuro, politely took a bottle and disappeared into the castle. About a week later Noli called – he loved it, the bar staff loved it, but most importantly, his customers loved. We were on!” 

Loch Measc Distillery’s first off-licence customer was SuperValu in Westport, and quite a few SuperValus local were very quick to stock the gin. “I cannot emphasise enough how important the support of SuperValu is in the area to small operations like us.” 

Eight years on and Loch Measc Gin is on sale in all the major airports, hotels, pubs and SuperValus in Mayo and Galway.