Barry’s

The Barry’s story begins with the singular kind of community that blossoms around a great local Irish Pub, and it culminates with an Irish cream liqueur conceived in Upstate New York, produced in County Tipperary, Ireland, and destined to build upon its local cult following after an official debut in 2023.

Barry’s co-founders, Jessica and Danny Barry, established Barry’s Old School Irish Pub in the greater area of Rochester, New York, in 2011. Though barely in their twenties, the couple had a driving desire to create the same environment of hospitality nurtured by Danny’s grandfather, who himself had been a restaurateur. Since a young age, Danny was inspired by his experiences sitting at his grandfather’s bar and drinking Shirley Temples to open an Irish pub, a dream further fueled by Jessica and Danny’s mutual Irish heritage and their time spent in Ireland during their honeymoon. Enchanted by Ireland’s pub culture—it’s sense of inclusion, camaraderie, and joviality—the couple set about creating a similar environment back home, and the sincerity behind their efforts paid off: Their pub became a thriving and award-winning community hub.

It was during this time that an in-house version of Irish cream gained a reputation of its own. The house-made cocktail, exhaustively refined by Jessica (without giving away too much, vanilla turned out to be the lynchpin of the recipe), was blended with a KitchenAid mixer and served to the pub’s more-than-receptive guests. So beloved was the concoction, that even during the pandemic, when take-away cocktails became the lifeline for many bars, demand for Barry’s homemade Irish cream vigorously continued. But even as early as 2019, Jessica and Danny realized that their creation had potential for winning a larger audience.

An acquaintance eventually put the Barry’s in touch with the Cooney family and their independently run Boann Distillery in County Meath, Ireland. In addition to their Irish whiskey production, the Cooney’s also run Robert A. Merry & Co., which blends award-winning Irish creams in Clonmel, County Tipperary, using fresh dairy cream and Boann whiskey. After traveling to Ireland to meet the Cooney’s—Jessica mirthfully reflects how she and Danny thought that they were deciding if the partnership would be a good fit and instead soon realized that they were the ones that needed to pass muster—Jessica and Danny were welcomed with opened arms. After handshakes with nearly every employee, a late-night lock-in at a local Clonmel pub, a subsequent trip back to dial in the scaled-up recipe, and a bit more enjoyment of the local pub’s music sessions, the Tipperary-crafted iteration of Barry’s Irish Cream was ready to come stateside.

Barry’s Irish Cream begins with the best of the best of its star ingredient: dairy cream, sourced from grass-fed cows in Ireland’s Golden Vale, delivered to the production facility within twelve hours of leaving its source farms. And interestingly, a neutral spirit distilled from whey is a key component of the Barry’s blend. Whey has increasingly been recognized for its potential as a sustainable spirits base, but more industrialized dairy producers aren’t necessarily incentivized to sell and transport this ample by-product of dairy production to relatively small distillers. Ireland’s Golden Vale, however, affords the perfect symbiotic relationship for distilling whey: craft distilleries and small farms producing on a similar scale and in proximity to one another.

Barry’s final blend sees this fresh dairy cream and whey spirit blended with other natural ingredients and a kiss of three-year-old Irish single grain whiskey to produce an exemplary Irish cream, ready-made for your next Sunday session or an equally convivial night cozied up on the couch.