The Waterford distillery was originally built as a state-of-the-art brewing Guinness facility by Diageo in 2003. It was purchased and transformed into a distillery by Mark Reynier in 2014. The former proprietor as Bruichladdich, Reynier was inspired to look to Ireland for his next project following the testimony from the Islay distillery’s Duncan McGillvray that the barley from across the Irish sea was the best he had ever seen. As with Bruichladdich, the Waterford distillery is terroir-focussed, sourcing all of its barley requirement from 46 local farms. The distillery operates a column still, and two pot stills procured from the closed Inverleven distillery in Scotland. The first spirt ran from them in January 2016, and its first publicly available bottlings were produced in 2020.

The barley used to make Waterford Ballymorgan 1.1 Single Farm Origin Irish whiskey was grown in County Wexford, just an hour away from the distillery and matured in a combination of French and American oak casks.