Tullamore Dew The Legendary

The original Tullamore distillery was opened in 1829 by Michael Molloy in the town of the same name in Ireland’s Co. Offaly. After Molloy’s death the business passed in the 1850s to his nephew Bernard Daly, who hired a 15-year-old Daniel E. Williams in the 1860s as a distillery worker. The talented Williams was to become Tullamore’s manager by the age of 25 and later bought the distillery - it is his initials that give Tullamore D.E.W. its name.

Tullamore distillery closed in 1954 and the Tullamore D.E.W. brand was sold in the 1960s to John Powers, becoming part of Irish Distillers in 1966. Production moved to Midleton distillery in the 1970s, before the Tullamore brand was sold to C&C Group in the 1990s and then to William Grant & Sons in 2010. Unhappy with sourcing all their whiskey from rivals, in 2014 Grant’s built a new distillery in Tullamore to provide for their malt and pot still whiskey needs, adding a grain distillery in 2017.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.