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72 / the tasting panel / march 2016 COVER STORY the world. Take a time-machine back to the mid-19th century and you would have found more than 30 distilleries, including some of the largest and most important that have ever existed. And step back to 1782 and you would surely have met Walter Teeling distilling here until his business was absorbed into the mighty Marrowbone Lane Distillery. So, irresistibly drawn by that heritage and the renaissance of urban craft distilling, it was little surprise that broth- ers Jack and Stephen Teeling chose a site in the heart of The Liberties for their new distillery, the first to be built in Dublin in over 125 years. And even less of a surprise that they chose as their logo a phoenix, for the Teeling Whiskey Company represents nothing less than the proud claim emblazoned on every bottle that this is "the Spirit of Dublin." The sale of Cooley Distillery, a business established by their pioneer- ing father, John Teeling, in 1987 and acquired by Beam Inc. in 2012 provided the spur (and much of the finance) for the brothers to go out on their own. As Jack Teeling explains: "I could have gone off and bought a franchise or could have gotten involved in property, investing or financial services but I felt I had a specific insight into Irish whis- key; therefore, it would be foolish of me not to utilize that knowledge and those connections and relationships and see if I could actually carry on what we had started at Cooley." Blood (and whiskey), you see, is thicker than water, and whiskey is surely in the Teeling's blood. But Jack and Stephen were determined to build something very different from Cooley. Predominantly a production led opera- tion, it had been happy to supply others with relatively little development of its own brands. The clean slate presented by Teeling Whiskey, helped along by a supply agreement of mature stock from their old employer, meant that the emphasis could be on building a brand from the onset. And when I inquired what that might mean, the brothers spoke almost in unison. "We don't want to just produce an Irish whiskey. We want to produce the most interesting and unique Irish whiskey so that when people want to get away from the mass market they can discover us and we can take them on a journey of trying different things," they confidently replied. Teeling Whiskey acknowledges and embraces its distilling heritage, not without a lightly-worn sense of the cultural importance of this venture, but looks to the future—as well a young and ambitious business rightly should. The brand is contemporary, reflecting its gritty urban base and inner-city reality, but at the same time respectfully saluting its heritage. Teeling is rooted in a confident sense of place without being dragged back by a mindless adherence to past conventions. Today, based on a personal invest- ment that exceeds $10 million, a gleam- ing new distillery, visitor center, café and shop greet visitors at the Teeling Based on a personal investment that exceeds $10 million, a gleaming new distill- ery, visitor center, café and shop greet visitors at Teeling. PHOTO COURTESY OF TEELING WHISKEY COMPANY