Newmarket Square and Teeling Whiskey Distillery

At the edge of Newmarket Square, three copper stills made in Siena stand in two neighboring buildings. Visitor rooms, a café, and a bar have been arranged around them, while production itself operates behind their walls. The Liberties was once Dublin’s district of brewers and distillers, so the distillery stands amid the memory of the city’s old industry rather than by the ring road.

Newmarket Square is named quite literally: it is a “new market.” In sixteen seventy-four, a royal patent permitted trading here twice a week. Wool, hides, and linen were brought here for the weavers for whom this district was known. All that remains of the trading ground are the name and the outline of the square.

The Teeling surname appeared on the façade much later. Walter Teeling, a Dublin distiller and ancestor of the founders of the current enterprise, opened his small operation on neighboring Marrowbone Lane in seventeen eighty-two, about one hundred meters from here. The old distillery was there, while the building on Newmarket Square was built by his descendants.

Jack Teeling ran the family’s Cooley Distillery, founded by his father outside Dublin. When it was sold to the American company Beam Inc. in early two thousand twelve, Jack was offered the chance to stay. He refused: after serving as managing director, he would have become one of the employees of a large corporation, whereas he wanted to produce his own whiskey. His brother Stephen, who was responsible for international sales at Cooley Distillery, worked for the new owner for another year and then joined Jack.

The brothers invested part of the money received from the sale of Cooley Distillery in the enterprise and took out bank financing. Jack was thirty-six, he had a young family, and building the distillery and visitor center required about ten million euros. Time was the most dangerous expense. New-make spirit may be called Irish whiskey only after three years of aging in a wooden cask. During all that time, they had to pay for construction, equipment, and employees, although they had no whiskey of their own to sell yet.

The brothers prepared a way out during the sale of Cooley Distillery: they agreed to buy back from the new owner sixteen thousand casks of already aged spirit. They blended it, bottled it under the Teeling label, and sent it to customers while the future contents of the Dublin stills were only maturing. Sales of the old stocks paid for the new production. The visitor center, café, and bar were also created with revenue and brand recognition in mind, which is why visitors are shown a working distillery rather than a set with a story about the past.

It would have been cheaper to build on the outskirts, near the ring road. Jack nevertheless chose Newmarket Square: Walter Teeling’s distillery had stood nearby, and Dublin brewers and distillers had once been concentrated in The Liberties. Three copper stills made in Siena were installed in two neighboring buildings. In March two thousand fifteen, they produced their first spirit from them, and in June the distillery opened its doors to visitors. It was Dublin’s first new distillery in more than one hundred twenty-five years; by then, the city’s stills had been silent for thirty-nine years.

In October two thousand eighteen, the first six thousand bottles of whiskey actually produced here, on Newmarket Square, had matured. The same three copper stills still operate behind the tour rooms. In June two thousand twenty-six, Bacardi became the company’s sole owner, while Jack and Stephen remained strategic advisers to the brand. Their surname remains on the façade; the distillery itself no longer belongs to the Teeling family.