Teeling’s Dublin Tour Showcases A New Generation Of Irish Whiskey

Going to Dublin, Ireland? My what a drinking town. Sure you can head over to the “distillery that uses the green bottle” as our tour guide and Teeling’s National Brand Ambassador Rob Caldwell joked talking about their very famous competition, but Teeling’s Whiskey isn’t your run of the mill experience that keeps you at arms length on the process.

Teeling’s is one of the new faces of Irish distilling, which is currently enjoying a golden age. Irish whiskies are being made by more distilleries throughout Ireland and being exported all over the world at a growing clip. When Teeling’s built and opened their distillery in the Liberties neighborhood of Dublin in 2015, they wanted the experience of a working distillery to be front and center, a rarity for larger whiskey “experiences” that are indeed fun and educational, but don’t let you see the process up close. They chose the Liberties neighborhood because it was once the heart of Dublin’s distillery business with 37 working distilleries pre-Prohibition. Now a handful of distilleries operate there.

The thing about Irish whiskey is its rules are looser than other whiskies like Scotch or bourbon. Irish whiskey’s grain bill can be played around with more and its stipulation for oak aging is merely that, it only needs to be aged in oak.

Teeling’s takes these looser guidelines to heart, using a lot of used wine, port or other barrels that once housed other different types of alcohol to create many different types of Irish whiskey. Over 150 different types of casks have been used to make different versions of Teeling’s whiskies. Couple that with how long it stays in the barrels and you have a slew of different whiskies to share and savor.

Teeling’s main tour is run every twenty minutes, seven days a week from 11-6 p.m. Speaking to the global appeal of whiskey and the cosmopolitan city of Dublin, the tour is given in multiple languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, and Mandarin. The tour starts with a whiskey cocktail and then goes into the history of Teeling’s and the neighborhood with a short video. Next you learn about the process from grain to glass in the room where the beer (yes, whiskey technically is distilled beer) is brewed and distilled. The tour finishes with a sampling of Teeling’s Small Batch whiskey. The only thing you don’t get to see are where the barrels are housed for aging, which is 90 minutes away as they don’t want a repeat of the great Dublin whiskey fire of 1875. There are a few special barrels aging there to show the process.

Teeling’s decor also used the street artist Shane Sutton to transform blank walls into something more akin to modern Dublin, away from the stereotypes to showcase a growing, vibrant city with so much to offer (and so much whiskey to imbibe!)

The main tour is 20 euros. I would recommend booking online just to be sure as 100,000 visitors visit each year and the distillery had recently welcomed its millionth guest.

There are three other tour experiences as well. The Trinity tour offers you samples of three whiskies and a whiskey cocktail while the Distillery Select tour offers you a sample of four whiskies including their totally unique peated Irish whiskey. Lastly, there’s a tour that finishes with you filling your own bottle of Teeling’s whiskey to bring home as a souvenir. All special tours can be booked online here.

If you are short on time, the tours are sold out or you just want to go straight to the whiskies, you can still visit Teeling’s. They offer a cafe on their ground floor with sandwiches, coffees and pastries and they have the Bang Bang bar, a whiskey and cocktail lounge that serves one of the best Irish coffees I’ve ever tasted along with samples of many of their whiskies. The Bang Bang bar is open from 12-730 p.m. every day and the Phoenix cafe is open 8-4 pm on weekdays and 10-6 pm on weekends and holidays.

Right before we left, an older man was strolling around shaking hands and greeting everyone in the bar. It was the chairman John Teeling, who was genuinely excited to be in the tasting bar and seeing the happy faces. He told us stories of his time in America as he went to college and graduate school there and thanked us for visiting.

If you are looking for a fun hour to spend in Dublin, this would be a great place for it. Remember to drink responsibly and enjoy a glass with the people you truly care about.