Cé hé Paul Dubsky?

A family affair - Paul Dubsky with his father (Paul senior) in front of the pot still used to create the first in the Ulysses Whiskey series at the Old Kilbeggan Distillery

So Paul, tell me a bit about yourself. 

Well, I was born in Dublin in 1978. I moved to Prague in 1992 with my family, and attended the German School for the first couple of years, and then I spent a year at the English College of Prague, the first year that it opened. It was a lot of fun. I don't think that the 1990s in Prague could ever be recreated.

Yes, and your family name, Dubsky, there's a Czech connection there, right? 

Absolutely. My grandfather - originally from Vienna - escaped from the Nazis in Austria as a boy, went to Ireland and was taken in by the Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College. His grandfather, in turn, came from Suchdol, close to České Budějovice - he was Czech, and that's where the Dubsky name comes from. If somebody asks my mother on the phone to spell her surname, she says, "Dublin without the -lin but with a -sky". It really confuses people! I got into business whilst still at school, and I've been in business ever since. I started buying packs of boxer shorts at Dunnes Stores in Ireland, and I would bring them over to Prague, so that I could sell them in the various skateboarding shops, where they sold like hot cakes - nobody else was selling boxer shorts in this country at that time. After school, I'd come home, drop off my school bag, pick up a rucksack, fill it with boxer shorts, and go to town on the tram to restock the various shops. I think I was 15 years old. Soon after my father decided I was on to something, so he told me to fill my bag full of ladies' underwear. He got some samples from a British lingerie company and a couple of catalogues. Then he said “Off you go to the various underwear shops in Prague and see if you can sell this stuff!”. It was quite expensive - there wasn't a market for it yet. This was when ladies’ underwear was still on display in shop windows hanging from one corner of the window to the other with fishing line - very functional underwear. And whilst the various shop owners (with whom I communicated in English or German because I didn't have any Czech back then) were very interested, they didn't think they would have any customers for it because of the price. So there you go. I started my career in ladies’ underwear!

And you continued through various other things presumably, to whiskey now? 

Indeed. Most of my career has been in the drinks industry. I left high school to join my father's business. He had just landed the Murphy’s Irish Stout agency. I left high school, I think I was 17, and was put in charge of sales of Murphy’s. I wasn't legally allowed to drink the stuff, but I was in charge of selling it. We did a good job, and in January 1997 we were rewarded with the Heineken agency for the Czech Republic. I also landed the Carlsberg agency, Foster's, Newcastle Brown Ale, Beamish, Strongbow, Magners (Bulmers back home), Kopperbergs, Hendrick’s Gin… lots of different brands. However, I always wanted to launch my own brand, and I finally had a eureka moment when I was visiting Sweny's Pharmacy close to the back gates of Trinity College in Dublin on holiday one year (I think maybe 12 years ago), and it struck me like a bolt of lightning: I should launch my own whiskey and it should be called “Ulysses” after James Joyce's most famous novel. So that's what I'm doing these days.

Paul Dubsky with the manager of Sweny's Pharmacy - P.J. Murphy

In fact have already done it - this is the second year, right? 

Correct, so we had our first release on June 16^th (Bloomsday) 2024. What we're doing is very novel, eccentric, maybe even borderline mad. We will release 18 whiskeys over the course of 18 years named for the 18 episodes of Ulysses. Each whiskey will come from a different distiller from around the world. We are walking in the footsteps of Joyce. He lived in Trieste, Pula, Locarno, Zurich, Rome and Paris when he wrote Ulysses. He lived in a couple of dozen different apartments in those towns and cities. He was a nomad. So I thought it would be appropriate to have a nomadic whiskey. Ulysses has been translated into more than 30 languages and is celebrated around the world in different languages, in different countries, time zones, cultures, religions. So, I thought, that's the right way to do this. That’s our journey.

Ulysses Whiskey first release in the wild

Based on the price, it's quite a premium product. What would you say about that?

Absolutely. It's a premium product, it's arguably a luxury product, but more than that, what we're trying to achieve here is art. It's set up to be an international collaborative art project. I think of the distillers as my brass orchestra, and I'm up at the front conducting the music, which was written by Joyce. Each whiskey is unique, and the artisans that make each one have an individual story. Each is 100% original, and it's strictly limited. The first release, which was in 2024, was only 5,000 bottles, and that's for the whole world and all time. Then every following year, we are going to release 250 bottles less, with the final release in the year 2041 (which will coincide with the centenary of Joyce's death), having only 732 bottles to match the number of pages in the book when it was first published by Shakespeare & Co. in Paris in 1922. Normally when you get into business, you say, okay, I'm going to start small, and every year I'm going to sell more and I'm never going to stop selling. I'm doing the exact opposite. I'm already starting small with only 5,000 bottles, and I'm going to reduce them every year, and then I'm going to stop in the year 2041, because it's an art project. An artist is born, he or she learns their trade, they take photographs, or make paintings or sculptures while they're alive, and they die, and then the art stops. That's what's happening here.

Tell me a little bit about your connection with CIBCA.

Indeed, my father was one of the three founders of CIBCA, originally the Czech-Irish Business Association (CIBA), with Ivor McElveen and Rory Mullen. I got involved when my parents moved back to Ireland in 1997. I was elected to the Committee and did my tour of duty for, ooh, easily 10 years, and held various different roles. Vice-president, Treasurer, President, I think for three years in a row. You're going to break my record, I think, aren't you?

Any advice you'd give to somebody looking to become an entrepreneur here?

Absolutely. Join CIBCA and come to our various events. We have this unwritten slogan since the 1990s: people like doing business with people that they like. That's what CIBCA is good at, hosting events where people can come together, get to know each other, make friends, and then you can ask friends for help and advice. If anyone wants to know about my journey over the years, my door is always open.