Midleton Very Rare - Bottled 1998

Ireland’s original Midleton distillery opened in a former woollen mill just outside Cork city in 1825. Midleton’s owners the Murphy brothers founded the Cork Distilleries Company (CDC) in 1867; a century later with market conditions in potentially terminal decline, CDC merged with Jameson and Powers to form Irish Distillers. Soon afterwards, both Dublin distilleries were closed and all whiskey production was switched to a large new distillery at Midleton, which opened in 1975. 

Irish Distillers was bought by Pernod Ricard in 1988 and the new owners have invested hundreds of millions in Midleton in recent years. Today, Midleton distillery has a production capacity of over 70 million litres of pure alcohol per year, making both single pot still and grain whiskey for their Jameson, Midleton, Redbreast, Powers and Green Spot brands, as well as the legacy brand Paddy’s, which was sold to Sazerac in 2016. Further investment has been announced to make Midleton distillery carbon neutral by 2026.

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.