The first new distillery in Dublin in 125 years, opened in 2015 in the Liberties, where there were once dozens. Small groups, real stills, and a fraction of the Guinness price.
Why it matters
Dublin was once the whiskey capital of the world. In the 1880s the Liberties held dozens of distilleries and Irish whiskey outsold Scotch internationally by a wide margin — Jameson, Power’s, Roe and George Roe’s operation alone covered seventeen acres beside St James’s Gate.
Then it collapsed, comprehensively: the loss of the Empire market, American Prohibition, the Anglo-Irish trade war of the 1930s, and the industry’s own refusal to adopt the column still. By the 1970s there were two distilleries left on the entire island and Irish whiskey was a rounding error.
Teeling opened in 2015 as the first new distillery in Dublin in 125 years. There are now several again, and Irish whiskey has been the fastest-growing spirits category in the world for over a decade.
The visit
Three copper pot stills — named Alison, Natalie and Rebecca after the founders’ sisters — in a working distillery you walk through rather than view through glass. The groups are small, the guide is a person rather than a recording, and the whole thing takes about an hour.
The tour covers the process properly: malting, mashing, the three-times distillation that is traditionally Irish, and the cask policy, which is where Teeling has made its name — finishing in rum, port, wine and stout casks rather than sticking to bourbon and sherry.
It ends in a tasting. The comparative tastings, which put two or three expressions side by side, are worth the small upgrade.
The others nearby
Roe & Co, in the old Guinness power station on James’s Street, is the most designed of the three and has a cocktail-focused tour.
Pearse Lyons Distillery is in a deconsecrated church on James’s Street with the stills under the nave and a graveyard outside. It is the strangest and, for a lot of people, the best.
The Dublin Liberties Distillery is around the corner from Teeling.
All four are within about fifteen minutes of each other, and doing two in an afternoon is entirely normal.
Newmarket
The square Teeling sits on is worth a look in itself — a seventeenth-century market square that spent decades derelict and now holds the distillery, a weekend food market, and a coffee roastery. The Liberties has changed faster than any part of Dublin in the last ten years and this square is where you can see it happening.
Practical
Book online. Tours run through the day and the last one is mid-afternoon, earlier than people expect.
Drivers: every distillery will substitute a takeaway measure for the tasting.
