A Conversation with Claire Davey

Claire Davey is the founder of America Village Apothecary, an herbologist and distiller, and co-host of our Lughnasa tour. We sat down to chat about what the Celtic harvest time means to her, about the newly opened Galway City Distillery, and more! 

My name is Claire Davey and I live in Baile Mheiriceá, which is in north County Galway, Connemara - Joyce country. A beautiful patch of the world, steeped in mythology and surrounded by beautiful flora and fauna and mountains and lakes. I work with plants to create syrups, elixirs, and tinctures, bitters, and spirits that you can take home, put in your drinks. 

What is America Village Apothecary and how did it get started?

I spent the early part of my work life in the community and activism sector. And then I moved from Galway city out here. I met a man in Galway - in a pub - as you do. He's from here in America Village, for seven generations. So I moved out here and added a new generation. I had two kids, and I was at home. I gave up work and while I was here, it was so beautiful that I started working with the land here more. I started working with plants and, you know, just making things in the kitchen for ourselves and friends and neighbors and just experimenting. The whole spirits and cocktail movement was becoming very popular here at the time. A lot of distilleries were opening and a lot of microbreweries, that kind of thing. And I thought, maybe I can make what I'm doing and love into a small business, and that's how America Village Apothecary came about. I started supplying restaurants and bars, and it kind of went from there. 

What kind of experiences do people have when they visit America Village?

The main thing we do at America Village Apothecary is to connect people with nature through the experience of working with plants and flowers. How those plants and flowers can be used for flavor, for healing, and for enjoyment and pleasure. Back to nature and back to basics, really–but to do it in an innovative and creative way.

So what people can do is make syrups, learn about tinctures, and learn about the plants we work with–to learn the history of the plants in the sense of the full picture. How would they have been used in the past? What is their healing power and energetics? 

So for example, if we'd be working with gorse or with pine–imagine you've never seen it before. What name would you give it? What personality would it have? How would it make you feel? So rather than just getting into the botanical Latin names, we take it to a very personal place.

We’re doing a tour together around Lughnasa. What is Lughnasa, what does it mean to you and what kind of experience will we create for the people coming on the trip? 

Lughnasa is one of the four cross quarter festivals of the Celtic wheel of the year. Lughnasa is also the month of August in Irish, and the pinnacle of the bright half of the year.  There are two halves of the year in the Celtic calendar- the dark half of the year and the bright half of the year. The bright half of the year is ruled by masculine energy. This isn’t about gender, but about the different energies in these parts of the year. The masculine energy represents outward performance, really showing yourself, really being out there in the world, really showing what you are capable of–and what you can grow and what you can harvest. The dark half of the year is the feminine energy and that's the opposite–very much about going inwards.

So Lughnasa is the pinnacle of the bright half of the year, when we've gone past the summer solstice. It represents a time of harvest as agriculturally the harvest season is beginning around this time traditionally. So we’re also going to think about what does harvest represent, for you? What have you been growing in your garden that can now be harvested? But also going deeper than that and tuning in to our own true nature and really looking at–what am I ready to harvest now?

As well as visiting all these amazing places and restaurants and farms where we will be thinking about harvest and agriculture and really think about what is in season, and how we can enjoy that.

Like all the other cross quarter festivals, fire is really important. So I'm really excited about how we're going to be ending this tour at Cnoc Suain in Connemara which is such a beautiful, special place and site. The caretakers of the land Dearbhail and Charlie are really true stewards and are taking care of this incredible place. We’re really fortunate to be able to access it and finish this tour there with a big feast and a fire. It's going to be really special. There'll be lots of eating, feasting, and beautiful foods. 

There'll be lots of visiting, beautiful, special, energetic places. And there’ll be lots of work on finding peace within. It's going to be a good one. I look forward to it! 

Speaking of peace within, my last question is about Galway City Distilling. What is happening there and what can people expect if they come for a visit?

So Galway City Distillery is a very exciting new project. There's no place quite like it, not only in Galway, but in the country, I would say. It’s a distillery, lab, and school, and I will predominantly be working on product development, creating new drinks, and distilling.

Then we also have An Scoil, which is the Flavor Academy. So the idea here would be we have 16 smaller lambics stills, that people will be able to come in for workshops, and be able to make their own free form spirit and learn about the different flavor profiles.And it won't only be spirits and alcohol that we'll be exploring in the flavor academy. We'll also be looking at things like syrups, sodas, fermented beverages. 

We also have a cafe and we have An Sconna - which is The Tap. Everything that's made in the distillery will be sold in the bar. We’re making everything ourselves, and things that we can't make ourselves, we'll all be sourced locally or within Ireland, except for the exception of a wine, which we had to source outside of Ireland. We don’t really have wine here…yet.

The next phase of the whole project will be a huge big interpretive visitor center center, which will be looking at the history of drink in Galway, which actually has a very interesting and unique history that’s not that well-known. There were many distilleries in Galway and the whiskey they made was known as some of the best whiskey in the world. It was a trading city, and a lot of that trade was in drink. 

So, we're going to meet in the middle of the wild men in Connemara distilling poitín on the mountainside and lakeshores, to the landed gentry that were in Galway. So it's kind of a mix of both of those. And we're meshing it together someplace in the middle! That's the plan.