Connemara Cask Strength 57.9%

Cooley distillery in Louth was founded in 1987 by John Teeling, a graduate of Harvard business school, using the column stills from the site's original industrial alcohol plant and pot stills from the defunct Old Comber distillery. Cooley began production in 1989, increasing the number of whiskey distilleries in Ireland by 50% at a stroke - Midleton and Bushmills had been the only remaining operational distilleries since the 1970s.

Cooley made their mark quickly, relaunching historic Irish whiskey brands such as Tyrconnell and Kilbeggan and releasing innovative whiskeys including Ireland’s first modern era peated malt whiskey, Connemara, and its first commercial single grain whiskey, Greenore. In 1993, with Cooley in financial difficulty and the distillery in mothballs, a £25m offer from Irish Distillers, who intended to shut the business down, was blocked by competition authorities. Cooley was bought by Jim Beam in 2012 and is now owned by Beam Suntory.

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.