Distillery
Connemara
The name Connemara conjures the wild coast of western Ireland. But the whisky is actually distilled far to the east, at Cooley Distillery on the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth. John Teeling converted an old State-owned potato alcohol plant there into a whisky distillery in 1987. Connemara breaks two Irish conventions at once. Most Irish whisky is triple distilled and unpeated, but Connemara runs through the stills only twice and uses malt dried over peat fires. That 18th century method gives it a smoky, sweet character closer to Scotch than to its Irish neighbours. It matures afterward in bourbon casks. Cooley now belongs to the Suntory group, which also produces Kilbeggan and Tyrconnell there. Connemara remains the only widely available peated single malt whisky Ireland makes, a genuine outlier in its own category.
