There's some bad news and some good news concerning Slane Castle, the historic estate in Co. Meath that's home every summer to Slane Concert, one of Ireland's most popular summer events.
The bad news: Slane Concert isn't (as you may have noticed) happening this year, despite earlier rumors that AC/DC and/or Coldplay were going to headline.
The good news: It's all for the sake of whiskey, and Slane Concert will be back in 2017.
Last summer, Brown-Forman, the company that owns Jack Daniel's, bought up all of the shares in Slane Castle Irish Whiskey for $50 million and made plans to build a distillery in the castle's old stable yard.
The Slane Castle estate is currently owned by the Conygham family, who launched the Irish whiskey brand in 2009. It had been distilled for them by Cooley Distillery until Cooley was purchased by US company Beam Suntory (which makes Jim Beam bourbon) in 2012.
“This is a major boost for tourism in the whole Boyne Valley region and there will be 25 permanent jobs created. That is in addition to the construction jobs and this will have a significant positive knock on effect for guest houses, hotels and tourism in general,” Lord Henry Mountcharles of the Conygham family stated when the new distillery was announced.
Whiskey from the new distillery will reportedly hit the market in 2017, and it was decided that hosting Slane Concert this year would have put too much of a strain on the building progress.
The concert has welcomed 70,000–110,000 people nearly every summer since it began in 1981.
Acts have included David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Queen, The Rolling Stones, U2, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Bon Jovi.
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