What to say about this new Teeling 24 Year Old? It’s part of the new high end of the range (together with a Teeling 33 Year Old) and replaces the Silver 21 Years (now in the bottle of the Teeling 15yo Revival). Presented last week, we were lucky that it was already available at Spirits in the Sky last week-end.
The 24 is composed with 1991 casks (ex-bourbon / ex-Sauternes) and we’ve seen many of these from independent bottlers. I loved all of them, because they have the typical Irish fruitiness but also hints of peat that are so uncommon for Ireland, especially for Bushmills where this specific batch of casks was presumably filled.
Keep in mind the special situation of the Teeling brand: they owned Cooley distillery, sold it but took a large number of stocks from Irish distilleries. They are showing great quality but they’re still more or less independent bottlers at this stage. Only time will tell whether they can transfer this status onto their own, newly started production in Dublin.
Teeling 24 yo
(46%, OB 2016, 5000 btl.)
Teeling 24 yoNose: take a few casks of the classic Teeling 21 profile (quinces, grapefruits, pineapples), add a few drops of the ‘Maria label’ profile (red fruit jams, bananas flambéed) and a little of the peated indie bottlings (say this or this, including the earthy twist). That pretty much sums it up for me. Complex whiskey, darker / jammier than what we’re used to from Teeling, and just a hint of peat.
Mouth: same thoughts. A tad more red fruits than expected, as well as cassis, orange peel, ginger syrup, berries, pink grapefruit. Almonds. And the light hints of peat and tobacco that are new, at least in official releases. Excellent, even at a standard 46%.
Finish: long, with more tropical fruits, a little oaky sourness and drier hints of cinnamon.
Great stuff – they simply had to bottle this themselves after so many indie aces. Ironically I think I tried the first of these at Spirits in the Sky as well, back in 2014. Around € 300.
Score: 92/100