It’s now more than six years since Whisky & Wisdom wrote its first article about Teeling whiskey, and there’s been three or four further articles along the way with subsequent reviews of their excellent whiskies. With the release of Teeling Blackpitts whiskey, the brand has put peated Irish whiskey back on the radar and it’s excited fans of the category worldwide. But before we dive into the specifics on the Blackpitts rekease, it’s worth recapping on the basics….
The Teeling Distillery was completed in Dublin in 2015 and became the first new distillery to be built in Dublin in over 120 years. It also became the first operating distillery in Dublin since the closure of the old Powers distillery in the mid 1970’s. While the distillery’s new spirit was quietly slumbering and maturing, the brand established itself by bottling older whiskey that had been distilled at Cooley. (Cooley had been founded by John Teeling in 1987, hence the connection.) The distillery’s first release of their own home-made spirit was the Single Pot Still release in September, 2018, and there have now been several batches of that bottled since. However, the new Teeling Blackpitts release is the next exciting home-made chapter…
When new businesses are founded and launched, there are numerous financial and business models that help get the product to market. There might be schemes to raise capital; funds assigned to support marketing and promotion; and then comes the down-and-dirty process of actually selling the goods. It’s obviously a very diverse and varied minefield to tread. If you’re wondering how to start a new whisky brand, or even how to start a new whisky distillery, the minefield is particularly tricky to navigate…
The whisky industry is an example of a sector where that diversity and variation is most evident: There are brands and businesses that go large scale and are backed by investors who put up millions of pounds/dollars, and there are – quite genuinely – “mums and dads” businesses that are launched off little more than sweat and elbow grease in combination with passion to create a craft, artisan product. And, in more recent times, there are distilleries that get established off the back of crowdfunding or barrel investment schemes – with mixed degrees of success.
William Grant and his wife. Were the challenges of establishing a whisky distillery and brand much different in 1887 to today?
A question often pondered is whether or not the process of getting a whisky business off the ground is easier or harder than it was in the past? There’s a multitude of different factors and considerations. William Grant, together with his family, spent over a year physically building Glenfiddich with his bare hands and started distilling on Christmas Day in 1887 to establish his own brand. In contrast, if you’re armed with a website, a social media account, and access to some spirit distilled at Cooley, it seems you can quite easily launch an Irish whiskey brand overnight – complete with an impressive backstory!
In the harder basket, distilleries setting up today have planning and environmental controls that their predecessors didn’t have to worry about. Council and municipal applications and approvals can take years to get through, and the days of casually discharging distillery effluent and by-products back into the river downstream are long behind us.
In the easier basket, as we’ve seen already, the internet and social media marketing means you can broadcast and promote your brand to a wider audience than ever for relatively little money. Online sales via your own website mean you don’t even have to fight anymore with wholesalers or distributors to get your product on to the shelves of retail liquor outlets. The days of Tommy Dewar hopping on a ship and spending months sailing around the globe to get sales are also well and truly behind us.
Let’s look at a few distilleries and brands from around the world that have forged very different steps in very different landscapes to see how the process unfolded….
The resurgence – indeed, resurrection – of the Irish whiskey industry continues to gather momentum, and one of the newer (and certainly more vocal and visible) players in the scene took another exciting step earlier this year when the Teeling Whiskey 24 yo won the industry’s most highly coveted gong. With focus again concentrating on the spirit coming out of the Emerald Isle, it’s a good time for fans of Irish whiskey as Teeling releases three new expressions into the Australian market. Continue reading “Teeling Whiskey – Three limited edition gems for Australia”
Teeling Whiskey, the new Irish brand (and new Irish distillery!) continues to make waves and inroads since announcing itself on the world stage. Whisky & Wisdom has written much about this in the past, but rather than repeating the history in this little piece, you can read our previous article here. With the Teeling Distillery opening in Dublin in 2015, there is a true sense of revival, and so what better name than Revival to give the first of the updated Vintage Reserve Collection. (Revival – a 15yo release – will be followed by a 24yo and 33yo release).
The new Teeling 15yo Revival – limited to 10,000 bottles – consists of whiskey distilled in 1999 and matured exclusively in ex-rum casks. Bottled at 46% and non-chillfiltered, it’s a juicy whiskey that provides an interesting mix of both spirit and wood-driven characteristics.
Fans of Irish Whiskey should by now be no stranger to the name Teeling, and the new Teeling Single Malt is turning heads in the Irish whiskey industry, as is the new Silver Reserve 21yo. The Teeling name and family claims distilling heritage back to 1782 when Walter Teeling set up his distillery in Dublin. However, things get more interesting if you fast forward two centuries to 1987, when John Teeling established Cooley Distillery and instantly changed the landscape of the Irish whiskey industry at that time. The number of whiskey distilleries in Ireland had fallen from over 100 in 1886 to just two survivors by 1970. Cooley was not just a breath of fresh air, but an injection of life, independence, new thinking, and new styles of whiskey into the Irish industry. When Cooley eventually sold to Beam Inc. in 2011, the stage was set for John Teeling to start another chapter in his life, going on to form the Irish Whiskey Company with a group of investors, including his two sons, Jack & Stephen Teeling. Whilst that company is currently focussing on converting an old brewery in Dundalk into a distillery, brothers Jack & Stephen have formed their own company, Teeling Whiskey Company, and set about bringing out new whiskies for the public to enjoy.
