Distilling the dream

Jennifer Nickerson left a successful career in Dublin to co-found a whiskey distillery in rural Tipperary. She tells Accountancy Ireland about her inspiration, ambitions and lessons learned along the way

When Jennifer Nickerson co-founded Tipperary Boutique Distillery in 2014, the Aberdeen-born Chartered Accountant had already risen through the ranks at KPMG in Dublin to become an associate director in the tax department just seven years after joining as a trainee. Tipperary Boutique Distillery is now exporting worldwide and employs seven people in south Tipperary with further plans for expansion. Here, Nickerson tells us about what inspired her move into entrepreneurship and her experiences establishing and growing a small business with global reach.

Q: Tell us about your life and career prior to co-founding Tipperary Boutique Distillery—what prompted you to become a Chartered Accountant?

I grew up in Scotland and my dad, Stuart, was a master distiller. He managed and worked as a consultant for some of Scotland’s best scotch producers, such as Glenfiddich, Balvenie and William Grant & Sons. You could say I grew up in the industry. I loved it, especially the passion the people working in it had.

I went to college in Edinburgh for six years, studying Veterinary Medicine initially and then switching to Accountancy. I decided I didn’t want to work outside in the cold and wet. 

I wanted to work in an office and I had this perception that a job in accountancy would be “nine-to-five”. 

I was wrong about that, but after meeting my husband Liam and moving to Ireland to train, I found I really enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of the work. Numbers make sense. There is a “right answer” and that can be very satisfying. 

I worked in the tax department at KPMG and did a lot of advisory work. The hours were long but there was great camaraderie and that makes for a really nice working environment.

Q: So you had settled into this new career in Dublin and you were enjoying it. What prompted you to up sticks and move to rural Ireland to set up a whiskey distillery?

I married a farmer—but I did tell him that I wouldn’t be moving to Tipperary unless there was work there that would interest me as much as what I was doing with KPMG in Dublin.

We talked it through and my dad had already mentioned during a visit to Ballindoney, Liam’s family farm near Clonmel, that it would be the ideal setting for a whiskey distillery.
We could grow grain, we had the land to build a distillery on, there was good quality water in Tipperary and good conditions for maturing whiskey as it’s a little bit warmer than Scotland.

He really just mentioned it in passing, but it struck a chord. I’d had lots of experience putting together business plans and I was lucky that Liam had a steady job working for the county council. It was a calculated risk and we could afford to do it, so we went for it.

Q: What was your vision for Tipperary Boutique Distillery starting out in 2014?

Ultimately, we wanted to produce a world-class whiskey from grain to glass here on Ballindoney Farm. 

We knew we had everything we needed, but we also knew it would take time, because distilleries are expensive and there is also the cost of laying down spirit for at least three years before it can be sold as whiskey. It wasn’t until 2020 that we finally had the funding raised, the facility built and the equipment installed to open our own distillery.

We had started outsourcing Irish whiskey casks from other distilleries cut to bottling strength with water from our farm and released our very first expression way back in March, 2015. 

After that, we started taking our own grain from the farm, having it malted and distilled by my dad at other facilities.

Now, we are able to do everything apart from malting here in our own distillery. We grow our own grain, we mill, we mash, we ferment, we distill, we mature and we bottle here on the farm. 

Q: Tell us about your markets? What countries do you sell to and where do you have the healthiest trade?

We sell into Belgium, France, Canada, into several states in the US, and a little in Korea and Singapore. We were selling to Russia, but obviously not any more, and we were in discussions with distributors in Ukraine and Poland, but the impact of the war has scuppered both.

Germany is our biggest market, Italy is great, and Belgium is a surprisingly steady little market as well. 

In Ireland, we sell online ourselves at tipperarydistillery.ie and through Irishmalts.com, James J Fox, The Celtic Whiskey Shop, and through local retailers around the country.

Q: What was it like moving from a successful career as a tax advisor in a Big 4 environment into the cut and thrust of entrepreneurship? Was it a good experience?

It was massively humbling to be honest, but also incredibly rewarding. At the start, I did miss having colleagues to talk to and bounce ideas off. I really felt I was on my own and it took me a while to find my feet. My background in accountancy definitely helped a lot with the ‘form filing’—understanding bills and applying for licenses, things like that.
At the same time, there were lots of things I didn’t know about, like where to get a barcode or source seals for bottles. It was a massive learning curve.

Q: What are the most important lessons you have learned so far running your own business?

I had no idea starting out how vitally important sales are. That sounds like a ridiculous statement, but it took a long time for me to shift my mindset away from numbers and deadlines to just getting out there and going after sales. 

What I know now is that you can’t give up. It’s no good just sending out an email to a potential customer and waiting for them to come back to you. You have to keep trying and telling literally everyone you can how great your product is and why.

That can be really hard because it’s very different to sitting in front of a computer as an accountant and working to a deadline. You have to be willing and able to stand up on a stage and say, “this is what we’re doing, we’re amazing and our product is the best”. 
There is a theory that 80 percent of all sales in any business come from 20 percent of costumers. Based on my own experience, I’d have to agree with that.

There’s really no point in chasing one-off sales. It’s far more important to focus on valued relationships than driving around trying to get a bottle into every bar in the country.

On the other side of the coin, you have to chase your bills just as much. If you’re not getting paid, you’re in trouble.

Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic and the more recent war in Ukraine affected your business and how have you responded?

As soon as the Pandemic hit, our orders from overseas plummeted. We had two pallets due to go to a distributor in a country that was very badly impacted by the pandemic and they ended up having to wait six months to take delivery. Irish people are brilliant though. They started buying more Irish whiskey during the pandemic and that really saved our business.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had a massive impact as well, because it caused major supply chain issues for us and other producers.

We had to change our glass suppliers, and we had really big delays with cork supplies, the capsules for the top of the bottle seals, cardboard for packaging deliveries—you name it, everything was disrupted.

Most of our suppliers I tried to keep, because we have good relationships with them and that’s really important in business. We were also probably lucky that we are quite a small operation, so we have been able to adapt more quickly than bigger producers.

Q: The Irish whiskey industry has grown enormously in recent years—do you think there is room for further growth and what are your own plans from here?

When we started back in 2014, there were something like six craft distilleries in Ireland, but by the time our own distillery was up-and-running in 2020, the number had risen to around 40. 

The market grew so much in that time. There is a lot more competition now and a lot more diversity in the sector, but there are also a lot more customers buying Irish whiskey in Ireland and overseas.

I think there is still scope for some growth in the market. Forty distilleries sounds like a lot, but Scotland has around 100.

What we are seeing is that, as the market matures, there is less focus on cost and greater focus on quality. Each producer has to know their niche and communicate it well to the marketplace.

For Tipperary Boutique Distillery, our plan now is to continue to sell in Europe, and expand our presence in America and Asia.

We want to continue to grow sustainably and one day—hopefully soon—open our own visitor centre at our distillery here on Ballindoney Farm.