Cooley Distillery

Republic of Ireland

Cooley Distillery is situated on the Cooley Peninsula on Ireland’s east coast. The distillery is a converted potato alcohol plant which was bought in 1987 by a company founded by John Teeling together with more than 300 stockowners. After two years of intensive labour the Cooley distillery were able to fill their first cask in 1989. Cooley is the only independent Irish whiskey distillery and were approached in the mid 1990s by Pernod Richard with a £24 million offer which was turned down.

Soon after being founded Cooley Distillery bought the right to use two dormant whiskey brands; the Kilbeggan and Locke’s. Apart from these two brands, Cooley also own Tyrconnell Single Malt, Connemara Peated Single Malt, Locke's 8 Yr old Single Malt, Kilbeggan, Locke's Blended and Millars Irish whiskey. They also do some production for retailers in Britain, France, Holland and Ireland.

Cooley Distillery first entered their whiskies in the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) in 1995. Since then, their whiskeys have been awarded with a number of gold, silver and bronze medals.

A Selection of Cooley

Online Shops

Cooley

2006-01-09

TWE^*

Kilbeggan Blended

Lockes Blended

Lockes 8 år Blended

Connemara Single malt peated 40%

Connemara Cask Strength peated 59%

Connemara 12 år peated 40%

Tyrconnel Single malt

Michael Collins Single Malt Irish Whiskey

Short Fact: Recently founded Irish Distillery which also produces some peated Irish Whiskey.

Character: Light, fresh, sweet and smooth. Some bottlings are slightly peated.

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Production at Cooley

For their malt whiskey, Cooley use two smaller copper pot stills with uncharacteristically large necks. According to the distillery, the size of the necks increases the time it takes for the spirits to pass through with 50 percent. The result is a more refined and milder whiskey. Compared to other Irish distilleries such as Bushmills, Cooley only distils their whiskey two times. At the final distillation, the raw spirit at Cooleys reaches 66 percent alcohol by volume.

The grain whiskey is distilled in patent stills. Cooley use two column distillations to produce the raw spirit for their grain whiskeys. The alcohol content after the final column distillation has an alcohol content of 94.6 percent.

After the distillation is finished, the raw spirit is filled into distillation tankers which take the spirit to the old Locke’s Distillery in Kilbeggan in the county of Westmeath. Here the spirit is filled into oak barrels, mostly vanilla-rich first-fill ex-Bourbon barrels. Cooley use their Bourbon barrels up to three times. Each cask is marked with production year, the contents of the barrels (malt or grain whisky) and also with its batch number. The casks are then moved into the 200 year old stone warehouses where it is allowed to mature until the master blender decides the time has come for blending and bottling.

All Cooley whiskeys are chill-filtered except for Connemara Cask Strength.

Contact Cooley

Cooley
Riverstown
Dundalk
Co. Louth
Republic of Ireland

Phone: +353-42-9376102
Fax: +353-42-9376484
E-mail: cooleydistillery@eircom.net

Manager: David Hynes

Visitors: Visitors are advised to contact the distillery in advance.

Owner: Privately owned by more than 300 shareholders.

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