Teeling opens Dublin whiskey distillery

The Teeling Whiskey Company has opened its brand new €10m distillery and visitor centre in The Liberties, Dublin – the first distillery to open in the city in 125 years.

Stephen and Jack Teeling (Photo: Teeling Whiskey Company)

As well as fully functioning distillery, there is a state-of-the-art visitor centre that will host whiskey tasting tours, a café, a bar, a private event space for hire and a gift shop. The visitor centre will officially start taking paying visitors from Saturday 13 June and will be open from 9.30am – 5.30pm, seven days a week.

Founded by Jack Teeling in 2012, Teeling Whiskey Company was set up to revive his family trademark of Irish whiskey and bring distilling back to Dublin. The Teeling Whiskey Company is run by Jack together with his brother Stephen.

Jack Teeling, founder and managing director of the Teeling Whiskey Company commented, “Today is a momentous day in the history of our company and something we have been working towards for the last three years. We are delighted to officially open our brand new distillery and bring back the tradition of distilling to Dublin.

“We are also looking forward to opening our doors to our first official visitors this weekend and we’re confident that our distillery will become a must-visit destination for tourists to Dublin from all over the world.”

The opening of the new distillery means that the brand has complete control of all aspects of its whiskey production, so that it can “truly lead the category in terms of innovation and build on the company’s ever growing reputation of producing some of the world’s best whiskeys”, a statement from the company said.

Irish whiskey is currently experiencing a surge in popularity both at home and abroad and is the fastest growing spirits category in the world. According to an IWSR, Irish whiskey is expected to grow by 60% between 2014 and 2019 and it is estimated that 96m bottles of Irish whiskey will be sold globally by 2016.

In April, Teeling told the drinks business that it was important for the Irish whiskey category to shake off its “Irish stereotypes” in order to grow further.

Criticising the tendency of Irish whiskey put off younger consumers, Teeling said that his brand is set apart from the rest through its more “urban” focus.

He said, “Our ethos is confidence in modernity but inspired by the past. We’re competing with the world, and not just with the Irish market, because we see that Irish whiskey is suited to younger audiences. We’re all about urban craft, not about Irish stereotypes.”