To celebrate the opening of the new Teeling Distillery in the heart of Dublin, the owners released a 15 Year Old Irish whiskey, that was put to sleep on rum casks in 1999. We still have to wait a little longer on their own production, so this Revival is from older stocks from Cooley.

Very fruity nose on mostly unripe banana and pineapple, with a hint of mango and guava. Mildly floral. Coconut kicks in with a vengeance, making it very sweet, followed by grapefruit. Some ginger and a pinch of salt.

You can almost call it tropical on the palate. All kinds of yellow fruit, but with a bitterness from both the oak and from pink grapefruit. It is a lot more spicy than you would expect after the soft nose. Again ginger, but mostly pepper now. A bit waxy, which I find very pleasant.

The finish is fairly long, but the oak does become very loud now. Not that I mind.

Wonderful Irish whiskey, but just a tad too expensive to my taste. Almost 95 EUR. The bottle does stand out in the cabinet, that is for sure.

Comment on @markjedi1's review

My first brush with Teeling was with their Single Grain matured in California Red Wine Cabernet casks and I have to tell you I fell instantly in love. It was such a beautiful and unique flavor profile that I had no choice but to.

Since there's not a lot of Teeling Whiskey where I live (Dubai) I really had to dig around to get my hands on a different expression from this extremely young distillery.

Dublins' first distillery in 125 years Teeling is run by Jack Teeling. Jack's family has a long history of whisky making going as far back as 1782 when a certain Walter Teeling set up a small craft distillery to make Irish whiskey. Since then the distillery, like Irish whiskey, has had it's ups and downs but now it seems that both are back in business.

To commemorate the revival of both the distillery as well as Irish whiskey this 15 year single malt was released a few months ago to eager whisky beavers like my self who were really curious to see what older Teelings would taste like. I don't know about anyone else but I was super disappointed.

My sample is from a brand new bottle served at 46%, distilled in 1999 and matured exclusively in ex-Rum casks.

Quite sharp. Very fruity. Like fruit sweets. Light honey. Lemon. Macarons. Hint of smoke. Dry leaves. Pineapples. Apricots. Sugar cane. Crisp green apples. One of the more sweet and fruity whiskies I've come across of late. But let it sit for a while and certain unwelcome astringency comes wafting through. I started off liking it but now not so much. Strange. 21/25

Oh no. Something's wrong here. I get the fruits but the spirit feels raw here. I know it shouldn't be but it is. There's the light honey and canned peaches but now there's a distracting bitterness that's throwing me off. That astringency on the nose is in full force on the palate. 17/25

Tropical fruits. Dry lychees. And that damn bitterness again! 19/25

Now I'm not a whisky expert so I'm not sure what went wrong here. The whisky is relatively new so there's not a lot of other reviews that I can look at to see if other people had the same reaction. All I can tell you is I don't like it. Which is sad. Because I really wished I did.

@Victor commented:

@MaltActivist, well, you might not be a "whisky expert", but I will listen to your opinions on matters of whisk(e)y taste over virtually all of those who are 'professionals' huckstering their commercial wares or blogging into the void.

Thanks much for this review. This is the kind of review that can prevent a disaster in buying increasingly expensive 15 yo whiskey.

Like you, I absolutely love that Teeling Single Grain with the American Cabernet finish. I've also had some Teeling Small Batch which was very "meh", just not very good at all.

Caution and research seem to be the words for trying out these Teeling products.

@MaltActivist commented:

@Victor How are you old friend? It's been a while.

Yes, I was quite disappointed in this one because I truly wanted it to be amazing but something went wrong somewhere. And at around 100 GBP a bottle it's a costly mistake to make, I feel.

Having said that I've not had a lot of experience with Teeling Whiskey so this might just be a solitary bad egg. Or maybe it's a whisky that just failed to excite me. I'd still urge everyone to try it and decide for themselves.

I feel guilty giving bad press to a whisky!

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Teeling The Revival 1999 - 15 Year Old

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Reviewed by @markjedi1

Reviewed by @MaltActivist

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