Celtic Crossing Liqueur Co.

Celtic Honey began its life under a different name entirely. Bottled in Ireland as a blend of Irish whiskey, honey, and native wildflower character, it is one of the more unusual expressions in the Reserve Whiskey Library: not a distillery in the traditional sense, but a liqueur brand with a corporate lineage that runs through several ownership changes and a full rebrand.

History & Heritage

The brand traces back to 1998, when Mark Andrews founded Great Spirits LLC, the entity that first brought the liqueur to market under the name Celtic Crossing. In 2003, Great Spirits LLC merged into a newly formed Castle Brands Inc., which carried the brand forward through the 2000s. In 2011, the liqueur was rebranded from Celtic Crossing to Celtic Honey, a name change that put its honey character front and center. Castle Brands was later acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in a deal valued at roughly 223 million dollars, which closed on October 9, 2019. Pernod Ricard then divested the brand the following year, selling Celtic Honey to Luxco in October 2020, and Luxco in turn merged into MGP Ingredients in 2021. As of July 2026, Celtic Honey sits within MGP Ingredients, marketed through its Luxco brands division. That path, from a small founder-led spirits company to a public holding company, briefly into one of the largest beverage-alcohol groups in the world, and finally into an American producer, is a useful reminder of how often a legacy liqueur changes hands without changing what is in the bottle.

The Whiskey

Celtic Honey is built around triple-distilled Irish whiskey, blended with all-natural Irish honey and limestone-filtered Irish spring water, then rounded out with the flavor of native Irish wildflowers. The standard Celtic Honey Irish Honey Liqueur sits at 30 percent alcohol by volume, or 60 proof. A newer variant, the Celtic Honey Beekeeper's Blend introduced in 2023, is built differently: it combines grain neutral spirit with Irish whiskey and honey, and comes in stronger at 40 percent alcohol by volume, or 80 proof. The earlier Celtic Crossing formulation, under the original name, took a different tack altogether, blending Irish whiskey with French Cognac and a measure of honey rather than relying on whiskey and honey alone. Together the three formulations trace a single brand's evolution in how it balances whiskey character against sweetness and proof.

Why It Matters

Celtic Honey occupies an unusual place on the shelf: it is not trying to be a sipping whiskey, and it does not pretend otherwise. It is a liqueur built on a whiskey base, made for the kind of honeyed, wildflower-inflected pour that works as an after-dinner dram, a mixer, or an entry point for someone who finds cask-strength bourbon or peated Scotch too intense. For The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library, it represents the honey-liqueur corner of the Irish whiskey world, a style distinct from the single malts and pot still whiskeys most visitors associate with Ireland.