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Teeling Irish Whiskey, established in Dublin, Ireland, in 2015, represented, at the time, one of the first of a new wave of Irish whiskey brands to emerge from a country with a once dominant whiskey scene. Initially working exclusively off aged stock that previously was maturing in the Cooley Distillery, today, Teeling produces a good amount of its own whiskey. However, there’s still some of the old stuff left around, and now and again, it appears in rarer bottlings.
What I’m reviewing here today, the Teeling Whiskey Very Rare Cask 33-Year Pineau des Charentes Finish, likely falls into that stock. The Very Rare Cask Collection is a portion of the Teeling portfolio noted as coming from “hand selected casks, specifically chosen by our master distiller for their distinctive characteristics and rarity” that herald from “some of the finest and rarest Irish Single Malts available today from the very oldest inventory of Single Malt in the Teeling Whiskey warehouses.”
This whiskey was distilled in 1989, matured in ex-rum casks for 30 years, and finished in a Pineau des Charentes cask for three more years. Pineau des Charentes, for those that don’t know, is a regional aperitif of western France consisting of a fortified wine (mistelle or vin de liqueur) that’s made from either fresh, unfermented grape juice or a blend of lightly fermented grape must to which a Cognac eau-de-vie is added and then matured.
Teeling Whiskey Very Rare Cask 33-Year Pineau des Charentes Finish, priced at $3,699, is bottled at 49.7% ABV. Only 316 bottles of it were released last year.