You know the story. It’s cold, dark and wet and just as you get to the bus stop, the last bus pulls away.

Well that’s about where we are, belting along the damp pavement, weighed down with Christmas shopping hoping against hope that we can get there in time – but we can see the exhaust thicken, hear the rattle of the engine change and wonder if we’re not already too late.

The distillery has been good to go for over six weeks, a second still was installed two weeks ago, our licence to distill is framed and pinned to the wall along side the Explosive Athmosphere, Fire Alarm and Emergency Exit signs. For God’s sake we even have the T-shirts! But without an eight digit number, that last bus is going to pull into the frosty night and leave us bent double, panting on the pavement.

t-shirt-back

That eight digit number we are waiting for relates to our status as a bonded warehouse, without the number we cannot hold or produce ‘duty suspended’ alcohol, in other words we cannot operate as a distillery. Meantime the bond document which should have been processed a week ago is still buzzing around the country like an angry wasp. You see a date was missing on one form. Not a signature, just a date. But instead of some bright spark just filling in the date, the entire form was returned so we could scribble it on. That cost us another week.

Will we catch the last bus for Christmas? At this stage who knows. But we will pump or arms and make like Billy Whizz in the hopes that we can at least supply those who bought from us at Whiskey Live in Dublin and those who tasted our gin at the Ballymaloe Craft Fair. If you are one of those people hang in there, we haven’t forgotten you. Expect updates as soon as…

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bus to catch.