Teeling Whiskey Company

Teeling Whiskey Company carries the name of Dublin's oldest whiskey family into a distillery that reopened the city's own production for the first time in more than a century.

History & Heritage

The Teeling name has been tied to Dublin whiskey since 1782, when Walter Teeling opened a distillery on Marrowbone Lane before it eventually passed to William Jameson & Co. Two centuries later, John Teeling revived the family trade by founding Cooley Distillery in 1987, rebuilding Irish whiskey production nearly from scratch during a period when the category had shrunk to a handful of producers. In 2011, Cooley was sold to Beam Inc. (now part of Suntory Global Spirits). Rather than step away from whiskey, John's sons Jack and Stephen Teeling used that sale as the launchpad for a new venture: Teeling Whiskey Company, founded in 2012 and built initially on aged stock sourced from the family's former distillery. Three years later, in 2015, the brothers opened the Teeling Whiskey Distillery in the historic Liberties area of Dublin, the first new whiskey distillery to open in the city in over 125 years.

Ownership has shifted since. Bacardi Limited first acquired a minority stake in Teeling Whiskey Company in 2017, became majority shareholder in 2022, and completed a full acquisition in 2026. As of July 2026, Teeling Whiskey Company is owned outright by Bacardi Limited, with Jack and Stephen Teeling remaining involved as strategic advisors rather than as owners.

The Whiskey

Production runs through three custom copper pot stills, individually named Alison (a 15,000-litre wash still), Natalie (a 10,000-litre intermediate still), and Rebecca (a 9,000-litre spirit still), giving the distillery an annual capacity of roughly 500,000 litres of pure alcohol. Fermentation draws on a blend of distillers yeast and South African white wine yeast, run through two 15,000-litre wooden washbacks alongside two 30,000-litre stainless steel fermenters, with dilution water pulled from the municipal supply and purified by reverse osmosis.

Mash bills vary by style. The Single Pot Still expression uses a 50/50 split of malted and unmalted barley, triple distilled and matured across American Virgin Oak, bourbon, and sherry casks. The Single Grain runs 95% corn to 5% malted barley, finished in Californian red wine casks. The Single Malt is 100% malted barley, and the peated Blackpitts expression dries its malted barley with peat smoke before triple distillation and maturation in ex-bourbon and ex-Sauternes casks. Across the range, Teeling also experiments with rum, port, and additional wine-finish casks, and bottles everything at 46% ABV without chill filtration to preserve body and flavor.

Why It Matters

Teeling has built a reputation as one of the most decorated names in Irish whiskey, marketing itself as the World's Most Awarded Irish Whiskey with more than 500 international accolades, including World's Best Single Malt honors for the Teeling 24 Year Old, World's Best Single Grain in 2014, and World's Best Single Pot Still in 2022 for the Teeling Wonders of Wood 1. The distillery has also picked up operational recognition, including Sustainable Distillery of the Year at the 2022 Icons of Whisky Awards and Master Distiller of the Year for Alex Chasko in 2026. For The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library, Teeling represents a distinctly modern chapter of Irish whiskey: a family name stretching back to the eighteenth century, married to a genuinely new production site and an ownership structure now fully under a major global spirits company.

Visiting the Distillery

The Teeling Whiskey Distillery offers fully guided tours running roughly 45 minutes to an hour, ending with a tasting of Teeling expressions. The visitor center in the Liberties includes a café, the on-site Bang Bang Bar, and a gift shop, and the distillery has welcomed more than one million visitors since opening in 2015.