Ollie Alcorn, Head Distiller at Athrú Whiskey, one of Sligo Food Trail’s newest members, is a man who has definitely led a life less ordinary. That life began closer to wine than to whiskey – in the Barossa Valley near Adelaide, Australia’s biggest wine region. For Ollie, working in the wine industry just meant accumulating enough money to fund his wanderlust.
He did everything from hand picking grapes to working in the massive contract bottling plants. Wines are brought, in gigantic 90,000 litre tanks, from all over the world for bottling in the Barossa Valley. He casually quotes figures – 12 lines each producing 250 bottles a minute. It’s an almost unimaginable scale.
Ollie lived the dream. He bought a camper van and on three separate ‘tours’ visited every state and territory in the vast country, including Tasmania. Sometimes he travelled with a friend, other times alone, always resourceful and able to pick up work to keep him going. He wasn’t fussy, taking any available opportunities, some more colourful than others. One of the most memorable jobs was in Carnarvon on the west coast, setting up a rodeo outfit. He recalls it as tough, physical work but great fun with every cliché from cowboys and bull riding to barrel racing and bucking broncos.
Further north along the coast in the Kimberley region the town of Broome is a major centre for the pearl industry. Ollie took a job as a deckhand on a pearling boat, heading out to the pearl farms for two weeks at a time. A team of divers retrieved the oysters from the seabed, each ‘seeded’ with small pieces of Mississippi clamshell, which would eventually become a cultured pearl in the mature oysters which grow to the size of a dinnerplate. It wasn’t quite as idyllic as it sounds – swimming off the boat was strictly forbidden as the local wildlife included crocodiles and box jellyfish. Fortunately, the crew were friendlier and in fact he met his wife-to-be Isabel on that pearling boat.
Ollie and Isabel returned to her hometown of Dublin in 2008 and lived there for a couple of years but demanding jobs and the birth of their first daughter led them to looking further afield. Ollie took a job in Sligo which gave them a much better quality of life.
Things took a new turn in 2015 when David Raethorne appointed him site manager for his new distillery at Hazelwood. Since then, Ollie has revelled in overseeing the development and being involved in every aspect. Under the expert eye of World Distiller of the Year Billy Walker, Ollie has honed his skills and is now Head Distiller at Athrú. It’s a premium whiskey and no detail is overlooked from the branding to selecting the perfect bourbon and sherry casks for the aging process. Ollie and David are running virtual distillery tours and tastings to coincide with World Whiskey Day on 13th May and Fathers’ Day on 24th June. Their whiskeys are available online and in some Sligo off licences.
Ollie, Isabel, their three children and chocolate lab Dusty have made their home in north Sligo. In a coy nod to the unusual location in which the couple met, their elder daughter is named Pearl. www.sligofoodtrail.ie #SligoFoodTrail
