February 2020 – Teelings Distillery

Waterford Whiskey Society was delighted to host Teeling Whiskey Distillery at Revolution Waterford for their February tasting. Chris Hayes the Teeling European Brand Ambassador lead the tasting and Jason Fox joined him as well. We had a full house, and everyone was really looking forward to the tasting.

Our first whiskey was Single Pot Still, the first whiskey to be distilled in Dublin in 50 years. This whiskey is 50% malted and 50% unmalted barley. This whiskey is a blend of 50% finished in oloroso sherry casks, 25% in second fill bourbon barrels and 25% in virgin oak. This whiskey has lots of orchard fruit flavors with a spicy ginger finish. This whiskey has a light finish and an oily mouth feel. It is under 4 years old and is the first release from Teelings own stills.

Chris explained to us that Teelings use dry white wine yeast from South Africa using open top timber fermenters for 24 hours and is then transferred to aluminium fermenters for 2-3 days.

Next, we tasted Teelings Small Batch matured in 3 types of Martinique Rum Casks. This is a blend of 75% Irish grain whiskey of 4-5 years old and 25% malt whiskey of 5-7 years old that have been married in rum casks before bottling at 46%.

Teelings was set up in 2012 by Stephen and Jack Teeling and originally was available in 27 markets, particularly the US. The Teeling name was originally used in 1782 when William Teeling set up a craft distillery near the Guinness factory in Marrowbone Lane. The Teeling distillery continue to use the Teeling family stock from Cooley Distillery.

The third whiskey of the night was Teeling Galway Bay Imperial Stout Cask. This is 75% corn and 25% malted barley with notes of sea salt and chocolate and a citrus finish. This was a real favorite of the night.

Next came the Teelings Single Malt made from 100% malted barley and finished in 5 different casks including Sherry, Tawny Port, Madeira, White Burgundy and Cabernet Sauvignon. The oldest malt in this dates back to 1991.

Following that we then had the Single Malt Brabazon 1 finished in 6 different sherry casks. At 49.5% abv this whiskey has the beautiful taste typical to sherry finish of vanilla and burnt caramel.

This was followed by the Single Malt Brabazon 2 finished in port casks and bottled at 49.5% abv and has an age profile of 10 – 17 years old.

Finally, Chris surprised us with an experimental tasting of the early stages of a single malt whiskey finished in ginger beer casks.

We look forward to seeing what unusual and interesting whiskeys Teelings come up with in the future including peated single malts.

We finished up with some lite bites downstairs in Revolution and look forward to seeing everyone again at the March tasting.