Our story, like so many others, begins with a vision – the joining of a proud past with a present possibility. For Islander Carl O’Grady it meant turning an island history of hardship and isolation into a reputation for the production of hard liquor. It would be of the Island and of the ocean. It would be the first (Irish) Single Malt to be aged at sea, to be gently moved and made new by way of the waves and to Mr O’Grady’s mind, it would require a resurrection of sorts. Born of sea-faring stock, his father, grandfather and great grandfather before him had served as ferrymen to the island, carrying from the coast every imaginable thing that every man, woman and child could want for. Chris O’Grady commissioned a ‘big boat’ in 1969 from renowned wrights the O’Malleys of Curraun and for *thirty years ‘The Dolphin’ served the people of Clare Island in weathers heavy and fair. Sold on in later years she ended up sadly sunk in the year 2000 but her story was unfinished. Thought lost, Carl O’Grady had found his cask-bearer. She was raised and reworked again by newer O’Malley hands and on this date the reborn Dolphin graciously accepted her new cargo – a single cask of single malt from the Connaught Distillery in Ballina. Time and tide would have their way, and scented by the salt air, seasoned by the sea breeze and informed by clean ozone, an altogether new character created.