Meet Dolf Stockhausen, the entrepreneur who says he can mature whiskey in a week and wants to do it in Ireland

Stockhausen claims to have developed a process that makes top-tier whiskey in days rather than years. But will Irish whiskey accept his methods?

Dr Dolf Stockhausen, whiskey innovator and entrepreneur: ‘Either Ireland accepts us and allows us to call our whiskey Irish whiskey, or we are not going to come to Ireland.’ Picture: Philipp Unterschütz

At the age of 72, with a lifetime in the chemicals industry behind him, and a tidy fortune from his stakes in two separate companies beneath him, Dr Dolf Stockhausen took a fancy to making some whiskey.

He stepped down from the board of Clariant, the nearly €6 billion Swiss chemicals company, a few years ago.

“When I was 70, I had to step down from the board because that is the dementia line,” he ...