Bushmills is often described as the world's oldest distillery, although the claimed date of 1608 is probably overstating the case a little.
It was in 1608 that King James I granted Sir Thomas Phillips, a local landowner and Governor of County Antrim, a license to distil. But the company that built the Bushmills Distillery itself wasn't founded until 1784.
The distillery suffered many lean years, with numerous periods of closure, and there are no official records of its being in operation in either 1802 or 1822. In 1880 it was bought by two Belfast spirit merchants, and in 1885 the original buildings were destroyed by fire.
The distillery was quickly rebuilt, and in 1890 the SS Bushmills, a steamship owned and operated by the distillery, made its maiden voyage to deliver Bushmills whiskey to Philadelphia, New York City, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama.
Bushmills managed to survive Prohibition in the United States, and since the Second World War it has had a succession of owners: Isaac Wolfson (managing director of Great Universal Stores); then Irish Distillers, which was bought in 1988 by Pernod Ricard. In 2005 Bushmills was bought by Diageo, which was then the world's largest distiller. In 2014 it was announced that Diageo was to trade the Bushmills brand with Jose Cuervo, the Mexican distillers of the world's best–selling tequila brand.
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017