The other whiskey tour we managed to squeeze into our non-whiskey themed Ireland trip was at Teeling Whiskey Distillery, which opened in 2015. The tours include a tasting, and they have different offerings which was nice (same tour, but more/better whiskey tasting at the end if you’re interested). As the tour is the same for all, let’s cover that first.
Before the tour starts, they have a nice exhibition space setup. It covers some facts about the distillery (how many visitors, pours served, etc), and provides a nice historical timeline about Irish whiskey in Dublin, as well as the Teeling history.
If you’re really into that piece, I’d suggest getting there at least 30 minutes early if you want to read everything. They’re pretty proud of being the first new distillery in Dublin in over 125 years, incorporating the “phoenix rising” into their logo (and not suggesting they shouldn’t be!) The tour guide ushered us from this space into a smaller room and talked with us briefly about the history of Irish whiskey, and how it fell from grace in part through their own stubbornness (not wanting to incorporate column stills over pot stills). They play a video of the Teeling’s talking about the distillery and their plans before bringing you into the working distillery.
If you’ve toured large distilleries before, this will definitely feel smaller. They step through the basics – starting with malted barley and pass around 3 canisters that you can touch/smell/taste the difference between un-malted barley, malted barley, and “Scottish” malted barley (heated with peat smoke, and what they were using during our visit). The barley is milled into flour and combined with water in a wet mill as it is passed to the lauter tun for heating and mashing. Several hours later the resulting wort is ready to be moved to their fermenters. It starts in one of their two 15k liter wooden fermenters, and after a bit is moved to one of their four 30k liter stainless steel fermenters to complete fermentation. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone moving the wort between different fermentation vessels, but Teeling is nothing if not innovative.
The two wooden fermenters were open for visitors to see what’s happening inside, with one fermenting away (the other they hadn’t yet added the yeast). They allow it to ferment over about 5 days until their wash (or ‘distiller’s beer’) is about 8% ABV. I asked about the type of yeast, as I’m always intrigued by how some distilleries place great emphasis on this (maintaining yeast strains for generations, or using different yeast strains to impart different flavors, or simply using industrial yeast with no provenance).
Our guide (Eimear) explained that they use a combination of traditional distiller’s yeast (the industrial standard at many distilleries) and a white wine yeast from South Africa which they found imparts some fruity notes to the spirit. She emphasized that the yeast doesn’t make a huge difference – that only 40% of the flavor comes from the process we see in the distillery (the rest from the barrel during maturation), but acknowledged it does have a subtle difference. Those of us who have tasted through all 10 recipes of Four Roses (where there are two mashbills, but 5 yeast strains) can attest that there is absolutely an impact from yeast, and I was impressed that our tour guide not only knew the answer to my question, but had some grasp on the impact it has on the final spirit – reflects well that they’re training their folks well and not just providing scripts to read.
After fermentation, the wash moves to the first of their three, handcrafted copper pot stills (made by Frilli in Sienna, Italy). Each of the stills are named after Jack Teeling’s three daughters. The first 15k liter wash still (Alison) takes the wash up to a low-wine of about 30% ABV. This is moved to the second 10k liter intermediat still (Natalie), where a second distillation takes the spirit up to about 65% ABV. This is moved to the third 9k liter spirit still (Rebecca) whose third distillation of the spirit renders a product of about 84% ABV.
Currently they’re producing about 30k liters of spirit a week at the distillery, and it is matured off-site about an hour north. They do have a couple of barrels aging on-site – the first barrel filled at the distillery (which has a countdown clock on the vault for when it will reach the 3 years and one day age to be legally bottled as Irish whiskey, which would be on 10/24/2018). The other is the Zoey Teeling cask, which was filled on the day she was born. For maturation, they use casks which previously held bourbon, cabernet savignon, rum, sherry, and other wines/spirits. The climate in Ireland results in the angels being less greedy, losing only about 2% every year during maturation (versus 5% for bourbon in Kentucky).
Now for my favorite part – the tasting! They offered three different tasting options we we visited. The entry level was the Teeling Tasting (€15) and included the Teeling Small Batch along with a handcrafted whiskey cocktail. The middle option was the Teeling Trinity Tasting (€20), which included the Teeling Small Batch, Teeling Single Grain, and Teeling Single Malt. We opted for the top of the line tasting, the Teeling Single Malt Tasting (€30) which per the web-site includes: Teeling Single Malt, Vintage Single Malt, and Limited Edition Single Cask. During our visit, the “Vintage Single Malt” we got was their Teeling Revival Volume V, and the “Limited Edition Single Cask” we got was a non-chill filtered, cask strength 9 yr single malt matured in Port – which is only available at the distillery. While not listed on the web-site, we got a 4th tasting of Teeling Small Batch in a highball glass, which was a nice palate warm-up dram (and made it easier on the guide to have everyone start with that). I liked how they managed the different tastings – when you get your ticket they give you a wrist band which is a ribbon (not one of those printed sticker things that aims to pull at your arm hairs). When you arrive to the tasting room, they have different tables based on your wrist band. This allowed the guide to move between the tables and manage the three experiences nicely without half the group feeling like they were “missing out” on what the others had.
We’ve reviewed the Small Batch and Single Malt here previously. The Revival was quite nice, although I didn’t find it appreciably better than the Single Malt. It is difficult to do a studied tasting in this type of environment (although their setup was one of the better I’d seen to try to provide for that). But for me, at a price point of €120 vs €55, I wasn’t blown away with the Revival. It had a lovely, long finish, and my dad thought that was his favorite of the four we tried. For me, the 9 yr port was what I liked best.
As I shared in an earlier post, I was on a mission to find a bottle of whiskey under the specific criteria – and here, on the last full day of the tour – I’d yet to purchase a bottle.
Just a reminder of those criteria:
1. Something I could afford (wanted to stay under $200)
2. Something I absolutely loved.
3. Something I could not purchase back home.
4. Something non-chill filtered.
5. Something bottled at cask strength.
6. Something distilled/matured in Ireland.
I was delighted to find something that checked every box in this 9 yr port. For €100, I’d have something delicious that I loved and could share with family/friends back home. Being able to fill my own bottle was a nice added touch. I’ll post a more thorough review when I can spend more quality time with it 🙂
They did have another single cask you could fill yourself (a 20+ yr old rum cask for €350), and they have a bar next to the gift shop so you could order a pour before you buy (something the US distilleries should consider for those gift shop exclusives; many a one-off bottle I would have bought had I been able to try it first!)
If you’re in Dublin, I’d definitely recommend carving out a couple hours (the tour/tasting was 45 minutes to an hour) and swinging buy Teeling Whiskey Distillery.
Sláinte!
Gary