Five Farms – a young Irish whiskey liqueur borne of decades of hard work

Five Farms has the highest percentage of whiskey in its category, but its founder, Johnny Harte, tells Gary Quinn that its success is all about putting your shoulder to the wheel

Five Farms is a young company but it’s no overnight success story: its creator, Johnny Harte, has whiskey in his blood. His family once had their own whiskey brand, Harte’s Whiskey, bottled from cask in his family pub, the Corner House, in Ireland’s most northerly county, Co Donegal.

It’s from here that the budding entrepreneur set out to carve a career that has taken him to work with some of the most successful whiskey houses in Ireland, including the original Cooley Distillery, working on financing and funding some of the biggest brands in Irish whiskey.

Coming of age

In November, the Irish Whiskey Association awarded Harte one of its Chairman’s Medals, a medal awarded every two years to individuals within companies that have shaped the industry. Harte and Five Farms lined up alongside representatives of Suntory Global Spirits, Pernod-Ricard-owned Irish Distillers, Grant-owned Tullamore Dew, and Great Northern Distillery – each of these global companies receiving their own medal of recognition.

 In doing so, Harte’s seven-year-old company came of age once again, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the biggest names in the Irish and international whiskey industry. 

“It’s a great experience,” he explains, “to be awarded by your peers. To be recognised for work that’s often done behind the scenes and by people who don’t usually feature in the marketing of a brand.” 

Creating brands is well-worn territory for Johnny Harte. He’s launched and grown a range of liquor and whiskey brands over the years and Five Farms is the culmination of that, and with great international success. In the US, his co-founders, McCormick Distilling in Missouri, has been the lynchpin for that growth, he explains. “They created an access and route to market as well as a development pathway that’s been essential,” he says. “But the product, too, is simply outstanding.”

The 10% difference 

Five Farms is made with cream sourced from five family farms in Co Cork in the southwest of Ireland. The whiskey is from Cork, too, but crucially, the volume of whiskey is 10%, an amount that’s much higher than other cream liqueurs in the market.  

He outlines how Five Farms is 17% ABV, which is similar to many other cream liqueur brands. But the amount of whiskey that makes up that 17% is said to be much more than that of competitor brands. 

He explains that Five Farms uses 10% Irish whiskey, while competitors sometimes use as little as 1%. A neutral spirit is then used to make up the rest. He says this difference in the amount of whiskey used, as well as the high quality of the cream from the farms, makes all the difference. 

Despite its success in its international markets, he’s particularly impressed with how it’s succeeded in Ireland. “Baileys is 50 years old this year. It started everything and really is the most successful liquor brand launched anywhere in the world. It started an industry that we can be part of, and that’s really important. We could build on that.”

Entrepreneurial drive

And building is what he’s used to. “I’ve 30 years of experience in this industry. I’ve launched a range of brands – some have succeeded, and some haven’t: whiskey, gin, and other cream liqueurs. When we launched Five Farms, I wasn’t 100% sure what the product would look like or how the story would knit together, but I was 100% sure of what wouldn’t work.” 

“That, for me, was a great step forward. That can only come from experience and having scars on your back – that knowledge about what doesn’t work – that drives you forward and helps the next product succeed. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re doomed to repeat them,” he says.  

“I often say I was blessed or cursed to be a dreamer, to have a big imagination. I was a creative thinker. And I was lucky that the creative side of my personality started to appear in a business that I could commercialise. I had a flair for it, and I understood it, but then it’s really down to putting your shoulder behind the wheel and getting the job done.” 

“I used to characterise my role like being a boxer. You might have a good round, but then, in the next one, you might lose. You still have to go back to your corner, get refreshed and come out swinging again. That, for me, is what it is to be an entrepreneur.” 

It’s a philosophy for life and a career that’s paying off, as Johnny Harte’s shoulder-to-the-wheel good humour and hard work allow Five Farms to grab headlines everywhere it’s launched – a brand very much on the rise.

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