Chris Kane
Old Bushmills Distillery
Chris Kane is a Cooper at Old Bushmills Distillery. Fourth generation. Born into the sound of iron hoops tightening on oak. Into the scent of char and old wood and spirit-soaked casks. He didn’t find the trade. He was born to it. Like the sea to a fisherman. Like the land to a farmer. The work was waiting for him long before his hands were strong enough to hold the tools.
He comes from Bushmills - not just the distillery, but the village itself. Small. Weathered. Honest. A place where names carry weight and stories stay close to the ground. His family has worked at the Old Bushmills Distillery for 140 years. Jimmy Kane, his great-grandfather, began in 1935, hammering out staves in a time when the world was still clawing its way back from war. Johnny, his grandfather, stepped in next. Then Alastair. And now Chris. The line never broke.
At nine years old, he started learning the trade beside his father. Not in some workshop built for children, but in the real place, with real tools. Mallets blackened by time. Adzes with edges sharp enough to command respect. Drawknives that had chewed through generations of barrels. He learned not by being told, but by watching. By doing. By failing and trying again. That’s how it’s always been.
It takes five years to become a cooper. To truly earn it. Chris did it in four. Quietly. Steadily. He used the same tools his great-grandfather once held, their handles darkened by sweat and time. He learnt early that the barrel is not just a vessel, it’s a vessel of flavour. Of time.
Coopering is a dying art. Machines don’t get tired. They don’t bleed or blister. But they don’t listen to the timber either. They don’t smell when the char is right or feel when the fit is true. Chris does. He left behind a sensible job, the kind with clean shirts and clear paths, to return to this. The tools. The casks. The lineage. And most of all, the chance to work beside his father every day. That matters.
“It might not be an obvious career choice,” Chris says, his voice calm, matter-of-fact. “But coopering has always been part of my life. When the apprenticeship came up, I walked away from what was probably a ‘better’ job to do what I love. The wood, the barrels, the craft, working with my dad, it’s a dream.”
But this isn’t romantic work. It’s hard. It’s repetitive. But it’s also real. It matters. A well-made cask holds more than whiskey. It holds history. Up to 80% of the whiskey’s character comes from the barrel. Without the cooper, there is no Bushmills. Not as we know it.
Chris doesn’t say much about legacy. He doesn’t have to. It’s in the way he sets the stave. In the way he taps the hoop, not too tight, not too loose. In the silence between hammer blows. His work speaks for him.
He is a keeper of tradition. The casks he builds will shape the spirit. And in that, they will shape the story.
