Tennessee Distilling, a US whiskey producer, is in exclusive talks to buy the former Waterford Distillery facility, the company’s intellectual property and its bottled stock for approximately €6m.

The deal, which was first reported by the Sunday Times, would not include the company’s significant stock of maturing whiskey – some of which is almost 10 years old. If the deal is completed, Tennessee Distilling would reopen the Waterford site.

Waterford Whiskey was opened in the former Guinness brewery in Waterford in 2015 by industry veteran Mark Reynier.

He said at the time that he aimed to produce a new kind of Irish whiskey, based on the French concept of terroir – how different soils types influence the final flavour of drinks produced from crops grown on it.

The company’s most recent accounts for its UK-based parent, to the end of 2022, shows accumulated losses of €7.7m and sales of €3m. Waterford distillery carried its substantial stock of maturing whiskey at €40.1m, but noted in the directors’ report that the stock was “independently valued at €101m”.

The most recent report from the receiver, dated 26 May of this year, put the estimated value of the company’s assets as “unknown”.

The company said that it had scaled back its distillation programme due to increased costs, citing an increase from €4.43 per original litre of alcohol (ola) distilled in 2021 to €7.39 per ola in 2022. It also refinanced its debts in January 2023 through a €45m asset-based lending agreement with HSBC. It was under that deal that the receivers were appointed in November 2024.

Waterford Whiskey’s downfall seems to have come from the cashflow problem which is not unusual in distilleries. Sales are usually very slow for the first few years as the distiller builds up stock over the long maturation process for whiskey.

The war in Ukraine added further costs to the company and eventually, despite having a potentially very valuable stock of maturing whiskey, the company found itself without the revenue from sales to keep up with its debt repayments.

The wider distilling sector in Ireland has gone through meteoric growth over the past 15 years, with the number of distilleries in the country rising from six to 50.

There were significant fears about the future of the sector earlier this year with President Trump’s tariff threats hitting sentiment for the industry with the US as a key market.

This uncertainty is reflected in the drop in the value of Irish whiskey sales to the US of €57m to €387m in the 12 months to the end of August 2025.

However, Irish whiskey sales in August 2025 were €3m higher than a year ago, suggesting that the resolution of the tariff standoff between the EU and the US may have helped sales start to bounce back.