Preserving history with Irish Distillers, Head of Archives - Carol Quinn
For this one, I offered some really insightful questions to Carol Quinn, the head archivist of Irish Distillers, regarding her outstanding work as well as a few private ones for good measure.
You're the Head of Archives for Irish Distillers; how did you come into this career, and could you explain your profession and function at Irish Distillers to people who don't know?
I’m an Archivist by profession and there are more of us about than you would expect! It’s a Post Graduate qualification, offered here in Ireland at University College Dublin. A lot of organisations with rich histories increasingly see the benefit of having access to their past. The past can better inform marketing campaigns and offer new product inspiration, building on the work of those who have gone before us. I work closely with our HR department also, providing historical precedents for our company values, and basically reminding as many people as I can of our wonderful and long history!
On a day-to-day basis I’m responsible for the management of our historical archive, records created by the daily activities of our distilleries over literally hundreds of years. That’s where you really need to know what you are doing and why it’s important to have the appropriate qualification. A lot of archives survive by chance, but here at Irish Distillers we have a purpose-built archival repository, so very little is left to chance!
What percentage of the collection was already complete when you acquired it, and how do you strike the right balance between preservation and addition?
The Archive was developed in 2012 as part of expansion works at Midleton Distillery which saw the construction of the Garden Still House and the Irish Whiskey Academy buildings. One of my first tasks was to gather all the records to one central location, clean and review them before transferring to the new building. I was lucky that there was an ingrained deep respect for the past within Irish Distillers, and so a lot of the historical records had been sent for safe keeping to national and local repositories until such time as there was appropriate facilities for their return. I took in 49 pallets of that material, which took me about 5 years to do an initial sorting of!
Do you employ any specialised equipment when working in the archives? Please detail the steps you follow when dealing with such sensitive material.
It is very important to know what you are doing when handling archival material, and equally important to know what not to do. The worst thing of course is what everyone wants to do - touch the items! The archives are safest when they are securely in storage, settled nicely in acid free coverings in a dark, temperature and humidity-controlled room. They only come out for viewing on special occasions and only then to our reading room under my supervision. Part of my role is to assess and communicate the information contained in the records, so the originals go undisturbed. We do of course make use of digital surrogates, especially of photographs in the collection, many of which you can see on display in our Brand Homes, the Jameson Distillery in Bow Street, Dublin and Midleton, Co. Cork. They help tell the story of our distilleries and brands, including Jameson, Powers, Redbreast, the Spot Range and Midleton Very Rare, to the Irish whiskey fans who visit.
When you are researching, how do you get your work validated as genuine history?
Archives are the raw materials of history. They are the records created during the day-to-day activities of a person or company and are created for functional reasons rather than with a view to providing a historical record. It’s the passage of time that creates their historical value as the information they contain is often unique and not recorded elsewhere. I work very closely with our Brand Teams to validate and authenticate any historical claims made about our brands or history. The Archives are used to validate any historical claim on our labelling.
How do you assist the current distillers when they are attempting to reproduce and manufacture, for example, a certain mash bill or spirit recipe, such as those documented, in the early years of the distillery?
I’m not sure that you can ever reproduce the past. The systems and processes have changed so much, new regulations around food safety for example mean you can never truly recreate a past liquid, but what I feel you can and should do is to use the past as a springboard to challenge yourself to enhance and improve upon previous iterations. That’s what the Distilling and Blending Teams have done now with the reintroduction of Jameson Single Pot Still. By understanding the brand DNA and its history, they have created a drink that pays homage to the past, but is firmly rooted in the now. They’ve used the blueprint if you like, to create something new and contemporary. Our Master Distiller, Kevin O’Gorman, is a huge history buff and often calls over to the Archive to have a look through the notes created by past distillers. He also regularly sends over the team working at the Micro Distillery in Midleton to look for inspiration in our records.
Sexism of women still exists in the whiskey industry, and it has lately infuriated the public. Working in the field undoubtedly aids in combating this archaic viewpoint. What are your thoughts on this, and what evidence do you have of women working in the distillery?
Sexism was, and in some cases sadly still is, rampant in many parts of society. Distilleries and the world of distilling didn’t exist separately to wider society, and traditionally distilling was seen as a man’s role as it was so physical, for example you needed a lot of strength to carry sacks of barley. Historically you also didn’t see women in management positions simply because society wouldn’t allow it! It’s hard to believe now but up until 1980 it was still legal for a bank manager to refuse a woman a business loan if her husband objected to her getting it! Those laws reinforced stereotypical attitudes that made it almost impossible for women to be taken seriously across any industry.
Thankfully that has changed and at Irish Distillers we strongly believe there is no room for sexism in the whiskey industry.
Today you’ll find women in every corner of our operations in many traditionally male roles. Midleton Distillery, the world’s largest operating distillery is run by a female General Manager, Jaime Jordan, an industry veteran who has worked across all of our production facilities. We also have several female distillers working at the forefront of Irish whiskey innovation. Many of our best distillers and blenders have come up through the Irish Distillers Graduate Programme which has enabled more women to enter the industry and rise within it. In fact, Deirdre O’Carroll, part of the blending team that developed the recently launched Jameson Single Pot Still, was an early entrant in the Irish Distillers Graduate Programme.
One million digitised records from Jameson's Bow Street Distillery in Dublin's Staff Wage and Employment Books were included in a large collection released in 2021 by Irish Distillers and Ancestry. The data was made accessible for free searches in the month of July 2021. Why was this data set made public, and will there be additional data sets made public in the future?
It was very important to me to find a way to make the genealogical material contained in the records more accessible. While the archive is an internal resource for Irish Distillers and is not open to the public, I have always tried to answer any genealogical query that I receive. However, physically looking through the volumes – some of which are half a metre in size – isn’t good for the longevity of the records and leads to damage. Thanks to Ancestry and the team who came to Midleton to digitise the volumes, all the records are available online and people can look up the records themselves and find out if their relatives worked at Jameson Distillery Bow Street and what their working life was like
There the material can be searched in context with other records such as census material and military records to provide as helpful a result as possible. I was delighted to be able to do this and allow all those names to be remembered. We do hope to do similar projects – watch this space!
How do you unwind when you're not at work? Do you have any interests outside of archiving and alcohol?
Does anyone have any other interests outside of history and whiskey?! No, I love the outdoors and in Ireland you’re never too far from a green field or a beach, so I love to go walking in the open air.
I’d like to thank Carol for her precious time and the IDL team, for making this possible. Thank You.
