—
casks of room across our own warehousing
Member experiences · The bond at Larch Grove
The bond that makes all of this possible.
A working bonded warehouse, ours outright, built for exactly this work — filling, maturing, sampling, gauging, re-casking, blending and bottling, all under one roof. Every cask the club lays down for a local sleeps in this building, worked by the people whose name is on it.
52°44′N · 6°52′W
Ireland's Barley Belt
Ours
the warehouse, the licence and the schedule — no third party to ask
Fill → bottle
every stage of a cask's life happens on this one site
1h 15
from Dublin, to where your local's cask actually sits
The building
A licensed bond, not a shed with barrels in it.
Larch Grove is a working bonded warehouse held under our own licence — the same footing as any distillery warehouse in the country. Spirit sits in it under duty suspension, every movement is logged, and nothing leaves without paperwork. That is what a club membership is standing on.
LicenceA Revenue-approved bonded warehouse, licensed to us — not rented space in someone else's bond
DutySpirit held under duty suspension until the day it is bottled
CapacityRoom for around — casks, racked and palletised across our own warehousing
On one floorFilling store, gauging table, blending bench and bottling line under the one roof
RecordsCask register, fill dockets and gauges kept per cask, and exportable for any member's cask
SecurityControlled access, alarmed and insured — a bond is inspected like one
StandardsOrigin Green certified through Bord Bia, and three whiskeys in market off this site
Revenue-approved tax warehouse
Under bond · duty & VAT suspended
Larch Grove Bonded Warehouse
Ballytarsna, Nurney, Co. Carlow, Ireland
52°44′N · 6°52′W
52°44′N · 6°52′W
ProprietorMount Leinster Distillers Ltd
Bond classExcise — maturation
Supervising officeRevenue — South East
Insurance coverAll-risks, in bond
Held underOur own warehousekeeper approval
Duty statusSuspended until bottling
Warehousekeeper, excise trader and customs registration numbers are held on file and shown to members with their cask paperwork rather than published here.
In plain English
What “under bond” actually means.
Three words doing a lot of quiet work on this page. Here they are without the compliance voice, because if you are putting €20 a month into a cask you are entitled to know exactly where it sleeps and who is answerable for it.
01
A bonded warehouse
A building Revenue has approved for holding spirit before duty has been paid on it. To keep one you are approved, inspected and answerable for every litre inside. Larch Grove is one, and it is licensed to us rather than rented from anybody.
02
Under bond
Your local's cask is inside that building, on our warehouse licence, in Revenue's books. Excise duty and VAT are suspended while it lies there — suspended, not dodged. Nothing moves in or out without a docket.
03
Paid at bottling, not at fill
Duty falls due the day the whiskey leaves bond, which is bottling day — worked out on the litres of pure alcohol actually coming out, at the rate in force that day. Rates change, so we will not quote you one. What does not change is who handles it: we do.
04
Nothing to settle at the end
No duty bill at fill, none while it lies, and none waiting for you at the end. Your monthly membership covers the whole run of the cask, duty and VAT included, so there is no envelope on bottling day.
What the facility does
Six things under one roof.
Most whiskey brands own none of this. We own all of it, which is why your cask can be worked from the day it is filled rather than left in someone else's dark until it is ready.
01
Fill
Our own filling store — spirit cut back by hand and run into the wood on site.
02
Mature
Racked bays with room for thousands of casks, all sleeping under our roof.
03
Sample
Valinch and thief work whenever a cask needs looking at — no appointment with anyone else.
04
Gauge
Level, strength and losses measured and recorded on our own gauging table.
05
Re-cask
Emptied, married into finishing wood and racked again, in house.
06
Blend & bottle
Blending bench and bottling line on the same floor — no shipping it out to finish.
The measuring
How a cask is gauged.
Gauging is just measuring, done properly and written down. Two numbers come off the table, and everything anyone ever needs to know about a cask follows from them.
01
Dip it or weigh itThe bulk volume: how many litres are actually in the barrel. Wood is not a measuring jug, so the cask is dipped against its own table or put on the scale and the liquid worked out from the weight.
02
Take the strengthA sample into the jar, the hydrometer floated, the temperature read at the same moment. Strength is only true at a stated temperature, so the reading is corrected to the standard one before anybody writes it down.
03
MultiplyBulk litres by strength gives litres of pure alcohol — LPA. That one number is the cask's honest size, and it is the number duty is worked out on when the whiskey finally leaves bond.
04
Write it downInto the cask's own record with the date, the gauger and the conditions. Every gauge across the cask's life is kept, and your local's is exportable from the portal whenever you want to look at it.
A worked gauge
Bulk volume in the barrel—
Strength, corrected—
Litres of pure alcohol · volume × strength—
For scale, one 70cl bottle at 46%—
A nominal barrel, run here so you can see the sum rather than take it on trust. What a cask adds up to in bottles is not a figure anyone can honestly give you until it is gauged on bottling day — which is exactly why it is gauged.
The angels' share
The cut the angels take.
Oak breathes. Every year a little of what is in the cask goes out through the wood and into the Carlow air, and it is not coming back. The trade calls it the angels' share, everybody pays it, and anyone who tells you their casks do not are telling you a story.
Reckon on about 3% in the first year, when the wood is at its thirstiest, and roughly 2% a year after that. It compounds, so here is what it does across the five years your local's cask lies at Larch Grove.
YearLeft in the caskGone to the angels
Ownership & traceability
Your cask, on the record, from day one.
A cask in bond is a serious thing, and it is documented like one. Your local's is numbered, chalked, registered and gauged, held under our warehouse licence with duty suspended until it is bottled — and every measurement taken across its life is written down and kept.
✓A cask number, chalked on the head and entered in the bond register
✓A fill docket with date, batch, spirit and filling strength
✓Gauges taken and written down at every stage of its life
✓Held under our warehouse licence, with duty suspended until bottling
✓A written ownership agreement, and the whole record exportable from the portal
Whose bond it is
A family house, not a middleman.
Flying Tumbler is the Walsh brothers' whiskey house — Thomas and Patrick — bonders, blenders and merchants. We source the liquid, mature it, blend it and bottle it ourselves, and we sell our own range in Ireland, the US, the EU and Canada.
When your local runs the club it carries the pub's name out front. Behind it is this: a real working bond, and the people whose name is on it.
Our rangeThe Bird · The Roller · The Tippler
In marketIreland · USA · EU · Canada
CertifiedOrigin Green, Bord Bia
Where it is
Ireland's Barley Belt, under the Blackstairs.
Larch Grove sits in Co. Carlow, in the south-east of Ireland — the Barley Belt, the grain country that grows most of the barley behind Irish whiskey — with the Blackstairs on the skyline. An hour and a quarter from Dublin, on a working farm.
52°44′N · 6°52′W
Dublin 1h 15
Barley Belt
Where it sits
—
Larch Grove in gold, the towns people usually travel from around it. Drive times are approximate.
What it means for your cask
Control here is access there.
Every part of the club that feels impossible elsewhere comes back to owning this building.
Filled here
Your local's cask filled in our own filling store, on our own schedule.
Scheduled samples
Progression samples drawn to a set schedule across the cask's life, labelled and recorded — not on request.
Days at the bond
Optional days at Larch Grove across the life of the cask — open to members only, and booked and paid for separately from the membership.
Bottled here
Your local's name, your outturn, run on our own line.
Where the money goes
Every payment buys an allocation in the cask.
A membership is not a donation and it is not a bottle order. Each monthly payment earns credits against the cask your local laid down — wood, spirit and warehousing in this building. Build the credits up and your allocation grows with them, and when the cask comes off the wood that allocation comes back to you as whiskey. The rest runs the nights.
Credits
Every payment earns credits against your local's cask
Allocation
The credits you have built up set your share of the cask's outturn
Bottles
Your allocation comes back as whiskey when the cask is bottled
✉ club@flyingtumbler.com
◎ Larch Grove, Ballytarsna, Nurney, Co. Carlow, Ireland