When the Teeling Whiskey Distillery opened in The Liberties seven years ago, it was the first new whiskey distillery to have opened in Dublin in over 125 years.
That’s an extraordinary statistic when you consider the rich history of Irish whiskey, and the fact that Jameson and Powers – world-famous names – both originated in the city.
Teeling do not pretend to be taking on their more famous counterparts directly, but as premium Irish whiskey goes, the distillery has been a roaring success – employing around 70 people and selling their whiskey in 75 countries worldwide. But the decision to build a distillery in Dublin was not without its doubters.
"There was a load of people saying, 'Why would you do that, are you crazy?'," says Stephen Teeling, who founded the company with his brother Jack. "Then you look at it, and we're like, 'Look at Guinness, look where they're based - it's right in the heart of the city'.
"It's where it started for Irish whiskey, it's where it started for our family. If we can do it, let's do it."
The Teeling brothers’ lives are steeped in whiskey: the duo worked for their father’s business, Cooley Distillery, which was founded in the 1980s, while the Teeling name has been associated with whiskey since way back in 1782.
In Stephen and Jack’s eyes, the Irish whiskey market was ready to be shaken up. It had staged something of a recovery since the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when Irish whiskey had shrunk to just 1% of the global market, but while traditional brands like Jameson, Powers and Paddy were well established, the Teeling brothers felt younger drinkers were looking for something more than tradition.
“Things were changing a little bit,” he says. “Consumers were, look, ‘History is fine – that’s a given. Whiskey is an old industry, it takes a long time – but what are you doing now?' – rather than, 'This goes back 150 years, and it's the oldest distillery in the world'.
“We saw it with craft beer, we saw it probably with craft gin, we saw it with the likes of the Brooklyn Brewery.”
Using the family name was a nod to the past, Stephen accepts, but it was also about building a strong brand. He cites Guinness and Smithwick’s as examples, and a visit to America.
“I got the opportunity to visit the Bourbon Trail over in Kentucky and met a lot of the families,” he says. “They were talking to me about deep roots, and how important it is from a whiskey standpoint to have a family anchor.
“It was an old tradition of putting a family name on products – you see it with Powers and Jameson – but I think the interesting thing for us is that we were saying, 'Look, this isn't a recreation of what was done in the 1700s and 1800s - this is us.’”
So what is it that Teeling does differently? Stephen describes it as “a much more hands-on process” than many of their larger rivals, and there are a couple of key differences.
One is Teeling’s use of rum barrels to age their whiskey – giving it its distinctive character – and the other is that they bottle at a higher strength to more traditional Irish whiskey brands.
“We bottle it at 46%, which means you don't have to do a thing called chill filtering, which means you're leaving all of the natural flavour of the barrel in there,” Stephen explains. “The whole thing is, you want to layer on additional flavour.”
It’s not just the whiskey itself that has gone down well. In deciding to build a distillery in the heart of The Liberties – close to the original, 18th century Teeling distillery – they added another layer of interest to the brand and created a tourist destination in doing so. Pre-pandemic, they were getting 100,000 visitors a year.
“We managed to find a location in the Liberties, which is perfect, where zoning was right and the history was right as well,” says Stephen. “It would have been so much easier to bring it back to a greenfield site, but for us it was important to have the anchors there.
“And actually, to have a real distillery – something that you could actually say, 'Look, this is real. This is our home, this is where we make all the whiskey'.”
That’s in contrast to Jameson, for example, whose tourist attraction in Smithfield is just that – all of their whiskey has actually been distilled in Midleton near Cork since the 1970s. But Stephen feels that there is room for everyone.
“What we're finding is, which is really interesting, is that [tourists are] doing Jameson and doing our distillery as well,” he says.
“They're going there for maybe the brand experience or a bit of craic – probably like the [Guinness] Storehouse – and they're also able to come and enjoy a real, working distillery while they're in Dublin as well.”
Bar sales suffered during the pandemic, naturally enough, but Teeling – like other premium brands – found that sales were still strong as consumers looked for ways to treat themselves at home. In fact, 2021 was their strongest export year to date and they have big plans in that area.
The USA is a big focus, and Teeling have eight staff on the payroll there. They recently launched in Nigeria and China, while Australia is strong too. Of the 75 countries where you can buy Teeling whiskey, Stephen says that “10 to 15” are especially promising.
“For us, it's about taking our story to a wider audience – trying to allow more people discover premium Irish whiskey in in more countries,” he says.
“The next five years will be [about] solidifying our position as that next stage of Irish whiskey producers, try and get our message out there, expand the team, get the liquid on lips as much as we can, and just continue doing what we do best, which is leading with innovation.”
