Teeling Small Batch Irish Whiskey (46%)

Today is your last chance to get tickets to join me for a journey through Irish whiskey at Toronto’s Bar Hop tonight and have a chance to sample this and five other great Irish whiskeys, plus a welcome cocktail and snacks!

John Teeling revolutionized Irish whiskey in 1985 when he purchased a disused industrial alcohol plant and converted it into a modern distillery, which he opened in 1987 as the first independently-owned distillery on the island in many a year. (Irish Distillers then owned both the Midleton distillery outside of Cork and the Bushmills distillery in Northern Ireland, therefore controlling all of Irish whiskey distilling, period.)  

More than simply operating an independent distilling company, Teeling was also revolutionary in the way he put lie to much of the mythology surrounding Irish whiskey, such as the notion that it was never single malt, dispelled by the revival of The Tyrconnell in 1988, that it was always triple distilled, by the double-distilled Kilbeggan, and than it was never peated, thanks to the wonderfully peaty Connemara.

After well over a decade of fighting the powerhouse that is Pernod Ricard, which bought Irish Distillers in 1988, Teeling sold Cooley to then-Beam, now-Beam Suntory in 2011. That was not to be the end of the Teeling name in Irish whiskey, however, as John Teeling’s sons, Stephen and Jack, opened the Teeling Distillery in Dublin in 2015, just down the road from where their ancestors made whiskey back in the late 1700s. It was the first new distillery to open in the city for over a century.  

Teeling produces a wide range of whiskeys today, including this, which the small print informs is finished in rum casks for “up to” 12 months, unusual for Irish whiskey but an approach that is gaining ground in Scotland. And the nose of this bright golden whiskey wastes no time in delivering that rum influence, with classic Irish whiskey notes like honey and fresh fruit combining with rum barrel-derived accents of molasses and vanilla. The palate is unapologetically sweet, both from the whiskey and the finishing barrels, with candied fruit up front, a drying mix of spice, mature oak, and dried orange peel on the mid-palate, and warming and peppery dried peach and apricot on the finish.

While certainly an unconventional Irish whiskey, this is nonetheless a frankly brilliant example of blending and barreling.

92 ($53 - $67; CRITIC’S CHOICE)