In 2001, Andre Levy and Mairade Kelly Levy set out to do something that the Irish drinks industry had not done before. Not to make another whiskey. Not to build another brand. To change the story that the Irish were telling about themselves — and to do so through the product the Irish had given the world. Whiskey. Not whisky. Whiskey, which Ireland had been making long before Scotland adopted the craft and eventually overshadowed it.
Irish whiskey had once been the dominant spirit. Before history intervened — trade wars, prohibition, political disruption — it was the preferred choice across the English-speaking world, admired for its character and refinement. Scotch was the late arrival. Then the late arrival became the category leader, and Irish whiskey survived in reduced form, its identity stripped away, concentrated in the hands of a French conglomerate selling a brand named after a Scotsman.
When Andre and Mairade arrived in 2001, Irish whiskey was being marketed as the ingredient that went into Irish coffee. No individuality. No depth. No pride in the history, the story, or the extraordinary achievements of the people who had made it. The category had no understanding of, and no interest in, the fact that the Irish had once led the world in whiskey — or that the Irish diaspora scattered across five continents were among the most remarkable people in the history of the world.
The Wild Geese was born from a different understanding. It was born from Mairade’s pride in her Irish heritage and the conviction that the real story deserved to be told — to the Irish themselves, to the diaspora around the world, and to anyone who loved Irish whiskey and had been given only a fraction of the truth about what they were drinking. They created the first premium and super-premium Irish whiskey collection, changing forever how Irish whiskey was seen and sold.
Two people, one dream, and a whiskey named for the men and women who refused to stay defeated.
