The provenance of Waterford Distillery’s barley, where, how and by whom it is grown, is key to their entire philosophy. They’ve engaged with 46 Irish farms growing barley on 19 distinct soil types and are the first distillery in the world to do this. The challenge was to illustrate the scale of the project and allow them to identify each farm as it is being distilled. It also needed to illustrate the soil type that each farm was growing on. The barley and the soil combine to give the whisky a distinct flavour, this is a key point of difference for them. It needed to be easy to use as part of the daily routine. We had to allow farms to be added or taken away, and also a solution to ‘highlight’ each farm. This is a permanent installation and has become an iconic symbol of their unique philosophy.
