Great Northern distillery

The Great Northern Distillery is the next brainchild of J. Teelings, former founder of the Cooley Distillery. Directly in the city of Dundalk, on the former site of the Harp Lager Brewery, in addition to pot still and single malt whiskey, grain whiskey has also been under development since 2015. The latter in particular is to be resold to third parties. Only the smallest part of the total production will be sold under its own name.

What does Great Northern Whiskey taste like?

Only time will tell

How is Great Northern Whiskey made?

Grain whiskey has been distilled in the three column stills since August 2015, while the three copper pot stills were put into operation a month later. The total capacity of the plant is an impressive 16,000,000 liters of alcohol per year. Of these, 12 to 18 million bottles are said to be used in the pot stills alone. Besides grain whiskey, pot still whiskey and single malt whiskey (unpeated and peated variants) are also produced. The pure mountain spring water that is used here comes from the nearby Cooley Mountains.

Since most of the emerging Irish distilleries specialize in pot still whiskey, GND has taken a slightly different route setting itself up as supplier of particularly high-quality grain whiskey for other distilleries and bottlers for their blended whiskeys. Nonetheless, single malts are also planned here under their own label.

History of the Great Northern Distillery

In 1896, the Great Northern Brewery was founded on the site of what is now the Great Northern Distillery. Since the 1960s at the latest, the locals have been lovingly calling it Harp Lager Brewery - a well-known brand of Irish beer that still exists today. When the corporate giant Diageo relocated the production of the Harp Lager Brewery to Dublin, J. Teeling, co-founder of the Cooley distillery, seized this opportunity and bought the plant with part of his profit, which he could get from the sale of Cooley. A proud EUR 10 million from the EUR 20 million profit has so far flowed into the system. GND is owned by the Teeling family and two former Cooley directors, Jim Finn and David Hynes.

The Teeling family seems to have a penchant for naming their pot stills. Jack Teeling has christened the pot stills of the Teeling Distillery with the names of his daughters and his father has now given the pot stills in the GND the very Irish names Fionn, Oisin and Setanta.

Great Northern factsheet