Taste The Nation: Meet the five West Cork families behind the 'Formula One' of cream liqueurs
The Cream Make Who Coleman Sons And Cian Michael For Five James Cows Farms His Cream With And Liqueur
Five West Cork family farms are involved in supplying the milk used in the creation of the award-winning Five Farms cream liqueur, hailed by its co-founder, Donegal man, Johnny Harte as the ‘Formula One’ of cream liqueurs.
The farmers involved are the O’Mahonys, the Colemans, the McCarthys, the Tuthills, and LJG Dairy, a partnership that originated from the Sexton family farm. The Clonakilty farms were selected geographically due to the logistics involved in sourcing a supply of batch cream from individual farmers. The bottle design is a nod to the milk containers of the past.
Five Farms is a small batch, farm-to-table product. The dairy cream is combined with Irish whiskey within 48 hours of being collected, so the weekly production depends entirely on demand.
Production takes place at Silver Pail dairy in Fermoy. “Five Farms has 15 per cent butterfat content, the highest you can have in a cream liqueur, and contains ten per cent Irish whiskey, which is ten times the industry average for Irish cream liqueurs,” Harte said.
The Irish whiskey content is sourced from a Cork distillery, the name of which the company is keen to keep under wraps. The natural vanilla extract used is sourced in Madagascar.
Five Farms is a joint Irish-US venture between Harte and McCormick Distilling Company in Weston, Missouri. Harte is a veteran of the Irish drinks business and had worked with McCormick on a number of projects over the years, including McCormick Irish Cream.
The Raphoe native along with Mick Harris, the president of McCormick Distilling Company, were in agreement in their contention that the Irish cream category was one that had not seen much innovation since first becoming commercially available in the 1970s.
They set out to create a premium farm-to-table Irish cream that contained high-quality dairy cream and ten per cent whiskey. Harte developed a plan to work with Barryroe Co-Op to select the farms that would be used, testing various percentages of Irish whiskey to achieve the desired flavour profile and collaborating with Silver Pail to achieve the ultimate formulation.
The brand is exported to the US under McCormick’s Holladay Distillery label. When first launching in Missouri in 2017, the team went to farmers’ markets and county shows to promote the product. It was also trialled in a number of restaurants. After an enthusiastic response, the brand expanded across the US and into other countries from 2018.
Apart from performing strongly in the Irish and US markets, ‘Five Farms’ is exported to Canada, France, Germany and the UK. Among its accolades was a gold medal for Ireland’s best liqueur at the 2020 Blas na hEireann awards.
In addition to Five Farms, McCormick Distilling Co. has a premium brands portfolio that includes 360 Vodka, Broker’s Gin, Tequila Rose, Hussong’s Tequila, and Whicked Pickle.
There are no plans for change with the brand, according to Harte who heralds it as the cream of the crop. “Five Farms has earned countless accolades for its quality, taste, and package. It is not our intention to release any new flavours or line extensions for this brand, because why mess with perfection?” he said.
“I am delighted to be part of the ‘Five Farms’ success to date with the team at McCormick,” Harte said. “I am looking forward to introducing ‘Five Farms’ to new consumers all over the world as our lives start to return to normal.”