Old Bushmills Honey is sweet success in global markets

Old Bushmills, the Northern Irish whiskey distiller, experienced a 13 per cent growth in global sales over the past six months.

The company, part of Diageo, saw the sharpest rises in sales in markets such as Russia and Eastern Europe - together up 22 per cent in the half year ended December 2013.

Old Bushmills was a 'star' performer in a difficult period for Diageo portfolio. Net sales in Germany and Austria doubled.

The launch last year of a smoother Bushmills Honey, the latest innovation from the county Antrim distillery, contributed to the growth experienced by the company, the world's oldest licensed distillery, the license granted in 1608. The company traces its history back to 1784.

Bushmills Irish Honey is a handcrafted blend of Bushmills Original Irish Whiskey and Irish honey. It's the latest addition to the flavoured whiskey category.

Triple-distilled Bushmills Irish Whiskey is made with the finest malted Irish barley and pure Irish water, and is the only Irish whiskey brand that offers a full range of blends and single malts - all of which share Bushmills characteristics: Bushmills Original Irish Whiskey; Black Bush Irish Whiskey, Bushmills 10-Year-Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey, Bushmills 16-Year-Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey and the rare Bushmills 21-Year-Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey.

The growth being experienced by Old Bushmills, which has been owned by Diageo since 2005, is a further indication of the spiralling global interest in Irish whiskey - now seen as the world's fastest growing brown spirit especially in the US.

For each of the last five years, Irish whiskey has been the fastest-growing spirits category globally, rising annually by high double-digit percentages. In 2008, almost 4.5 million cases of Irish whiskey were sold around the world.

Driven by the success of Jameson, particularly in the US, over six million cases were shifted in 2012. Jameson racked up just over four million cases and Bushmills 678,000 last year.

Experts confidently predict that sales can easily hit 10 million cases by 2016. Scotch Whisky currently sells 96 million and Bourbon 30 million cases, which means there's plenty of ground to be made up.

It was all so different at the turn of the 20thcentury. Irish whiskey sales dwarfed those of Scotch, with the world's biggest distilleries being in Belfast and Londonderry.

Prohibition in the US ended the dominance of Irish whiskey there. It left the door open for Scotch. And it's taken almost century for the industry to recover.