Tullamore

Overview

Tullamore Dew is a brand of Irish whiskey produced by William Grant & Sons. It is the second largest selling brand of Irish whiskey globally, with sales of over 950,000 cases per annum as of 2015.

The whiskey was originally produced in the Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland, at the old Tullamore Distillery which was established in 1829. Its name being derived from the initials of Daniel E. Williams (D.E.W.), a general manager and later owner of the original distillery. In 1954, the original distillery closed down, and with stocks of whiskey running low, the brand was sold to John Powers & Son, another Irish distiller in the 1960s, with production transferred to the Midleton Distillery, County Cork in the 1970s following a merger of three major Irish distillers.

In 2010, the brand was purchased by William Grant & Sons, who constructed a new distillery on the outskirts of Tullamore. The new distillery opened in 2014, bringing production of the whiskey back to the town after a break of sixty years.

In 2012, a visitor centre was opened in a refurbished bonded warehouse previously belonging to the original distillery. The centre offers guided tours and tutored tastings ranging from 50 minutes to 5 hours in duration.

Location and contact details

Location" Location: Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland
Visitor Visit Type: Vistor Centre
Co-ordinates" Co-ordinates: 53.277756, -7.492872
Email" Email: info[at]tullamoredew.com
Web" Web: https://www.tullamoredew.com/en-gb/visit-us/
Twitter" Twitter: Tullamore D.E.W. (@TullamoreDEW)

Facts and figures

LocationCo. Offaly
Founded1829
FounderDaniel E. Williams
OwnerWilliam Grant & Sons

Opening Hours

Opening Times:
Mon - Sat: 9.30 - 18.00
Sun/Bank Holidays: 11.30 - 17.00

Closed: December 24th – Jan 2nd inclusive

Tours

Curious Taster's Journey

€14

Enter Tullamore D.E.W.’s Old Bonded Warehouse and get up close and personal with our history, and of their our whiskey, on this journey for the curious tasters among you.

You’ll be personally welcomed and guided by one of their whiskey experts from beginning to end. Starting with the birth of a blend and finishing with your very own triple tasting.

Whiskey Wise Masterclass

€28

The masterclass lets you explore the depth of character in six of Tullamore Dew's finest whiskeys as you enjoy a tutored tasting.

They also delve into the character of Daniel E. Williams and the whiskey making process he perfected, as you are guided by one of their whiskey experts.

You conclude your tour with exclusive access to the D.E. Williams Branch House, where you can take a well-earned rest and put your new-found knowledge to good use.

Ultimate Distillery Experience

€90

Become a personal guest at the Tullamore Distillery and take in the splendour of Distillery House.

The Distillery Ambassador will lead you through the production process from Still House to Warehouse. Then you enter the Blending Room for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to create your own unique blend of whiskey.

One thing’s for sure, you’ll soon feel part of the Tullamore D.E.W. family as you exchange stories by the fire with a rare glass of one of the exclusive blends.

Call to book: +353 57 93 25015

Review: Ultimate Distillery Experience (13:00 on 05/09/2019)

Price: €72

The Ultimate Distillery Experience takes place at the actual Tullamore distillery and not the Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre; after booking the tour, the email confirmation said it was at the visitor centre, but a couple of days before I recevied another email to tell me the original email was incorrect and instead I should go to the distillery. I was already aware of this and had planned to be going to the distillery anyway.

The distillery is only a few years old, built in 2014, and doesn't return the correct location when searching on all mapping psites; Bing for example returns the distillery in the centre of Tullamore where the visitort centre is. Instead search for Distillery Roundabout.

Despite being a new distillery, there is no visitor centre or reception. When you arrive, the car park is outside of the distillery grounds; as you enter, you need to stop and speak to someone to lower the barriers. Once in the car park, you then need to wait for your tour start time and the guide to open the gate. I arrived a few minutes early and spent the time chatting to a couple of Americans from Nebraska (originally from Texas).

The Ultimate Distillery Experience is limited to 8 people and there was 7 on the tour I attended; five Americans United States of America and a couple from New Zealand New Zealand (one of whom was originally from Virginia in the US).

Our tour guide was a yong lady called Orla who said she usually worked at the visitor centre, but comes to the distillery for this tour and it was only her third time conducting it.

The tour starts with an explanation of the history of Tullamore D.E.W. and the distilleries. You then don a jacket and hat to have a group photo taken (which the guide will email out to the group; I've not received this yet).

The tour then moves onto the distillery where you get a tour of the production area where the single pot still and single malt whiskey is produced. The is a large room containing all of the equipment used in the production of whiskey, with the exception of the mills whick are in a side room viewed via a window. This is a safety precaution as milling produces flour which is explosive.

Unfortunately, you need to leave cameras and phones by the door and the stills and whiskey safe are too far away and behind other equipment for you to get any photos of them. This is a shame as one of the still is of a shape I have never seen before. The production process was well described and you got to peer through the windows into the mash tun and wash backs.

You then leave the still house and head outside for the rest of the tour. First of all you visit the grain whiskey distillery (the first I have visited), have various other buildings or containers used in production or storage pointed out before a visit to a warehouse. In the warehouse you again have to leave your cameras by the door (although you can take some phoots from this vantage point). As you walk though the warehouse you'll hear about the different barrels and aging of the whiskey.

After this you walk back, by a different route, to the original building where you get to blend your own whiskey to bottle and take home.

There are three cask strength bottles set out for you to sample and then mix:

  1. Sherry aged single pot still.
  2. Bourbon aged single malt.
  3. Bourbon aged single grain.

It is at this point that I wished that I wasn't driving as I had to be very careful. If you're not driving you can experiement with different measures of the available spirits to produce a blend to your taste. As I was driving, I had to do this carefully and without much sampling. I ended up mixing 50/30/20 of the single pot still/single malt/single grain.

Food in the form of bread, meats and cheese was provided at the end of the blending experience. This was not something I expected, but it was welcome and enthusiastically consumed by the group.

After the blending experience, you get to sample three whiskies:

  1. Tullamore D.E.W. XO Caribbean Rum Cask Finish Blended Whiskey
  2. Tullamore Dew 12 Year Old Whiskey 70cl
  3. Tullamore D.E.W. 18 Year Old Single Malt Single Malt Whiskey

Irish disitlleries are not prepped with sample pots for you to carry away, but had no problem with me using my own pots (I'm an experienced distillery visitor and come prepared).

The final sample is a Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey 70cl mixed with tonic water over ice.

I've really only had the standard Tullamore DEW and enjoyed all of the samples except the Whiskey and tonmic, but this is because I'm not keen on the taste of tonic.

For those who needed taxis, the guide organised this for them while we were tasting the samples.

The tour was well thought through and presented. With it being a new distillery I was surprised at the lack of visitor facilities. Most new distilleries have visitor centres and are set up for tours, but this is very much a working distillery with the tours almost an afterthought. This was surprising as it is owned by William Grant & Sons who also own Glenfiddich and The Balvenie in Scotland so I expected a more visitor centric experience. I suspect that the original intention might have been to have all tours handled at the visitor centre and then found people still asked about visiting the disitllery itself.

I'd originally looked to visit this distillery in September when I did my tourt of Ireland, but couldn't fit it into my schedule; at that time this tour cost €150, but has now been reduced to €90 and I got it on a special summer price of €72. So ultimetaly, I'm quite happy I couldn't get for a visit last year.

Review: Whiskey Wise Masterclass (14:30 on 09/09/2018)

Price: €28

Tullamore Dew was my second distillery tour of my visit to Ireland. I did the Whiskey Wise Master Class which is an experience at the vistor centre in the old bonded warehouse and not the new distillery.

The tour was very good and intersting; the guide knew the subject and gave good overview of the both history and process of making Tullamore Dew. The visitor centre is very well laid out with some historical artifacts as well as some small reproductions of some copper pot stills (the guide wasn't sure if they were scaled down replicas oof the actual stills).

This was the first non-distillery visit I've done; it is a very different experience to visiting a distillery, even one which is silent at the time of visit.

On this tour you get to sample six 10ml samples of various Tullamore Dew whiskies. The guided tasting was well done with information provided on each of the samples whiskeies. The tasting occurs in the D.E. Williams Branch House which is a reproduction of an old store. Tastfully done and a near perfect place to sample the whiskies (leather wing back armchair in front of an open fire or woodburning stove required for perfection).

This was the third most expensive whiskey related experience I did in Ireland. It was good, but not as good as Kilbeggan where I did the Distillers Tour which cost only €2 more. Next time I am in Ireland I intend to return to Tullamore Dew and do the Ultimate Distillery Experience which, currently costs €150 and includes lunch and the behind the scenes tour at the distillery itself.

As a side note, the website says there is ample parking and followed the Tullamore Dew Visitor Centre signs, but I couldn't actually find any parking onsite and ended up parking on a nearby street. I was there on a Sunday so street parking was free, but during the week the street parking is pay and display.

History

The origins of Tullamore Dew date back to 1829, when a distillery was established in Tullamore by Michael Molloy. On his death, the distillery eventually passed to his nephew, Bernard Daly who later appointed Daniel E. Williams as the distillery's General Manager. Under Williams's watchful eye, the distillery expanded and prospered, launching the whiskey bearing his initials (D.E.W.), Tullamore Dew.

In 1954, the distillery ceased production, having, like many of those in Ireland at the time, been hit by declining sales due to a number of factors such as Prohibition, the Anglo-Irish Trade War and high taxes introduced by the Irish Free State.

In the 1960s, with whiskey stocks running low, rather than reopen the distillery, the owners opted to sell the brand to John Powers & Son, the Dublin distillers. In 1966, John Powers & Son merged with two other Irish distilleries to form Irish Distillers. In the 1970s, Irish distillers closed their existing distilleries and consolidated production at a new distillery built in Midleton, County Cork.

In 1994, Irish Distillers, then concentrating their international focus on promoting Jameson Irish whiskey, sold the brand to the C&C Group. Subsequently, the C&C Group divested their entire liqueur and spirit business (including Tullamore Dew), which was acquired by William Grant & Sons for €300 million in 2010. At which point, Tullamore Dew was still being produced under license by at the Midleton Distillery. Therefore, as expansion of the brand was dependent on the availability of whiskey from Midleton, and with significant growth envisaged, William Grant & Sons opted to construct a new distillery in Tullamore, rather than depend on outsourced production.

Construction of the distillery is to take place on a phased basis. Phase one was completed in 2014, which saw production of whiskey return to Tullamore for the first time in sixty years. The new distillery has the capapability to produce both malt and pot still whiskey. However, it does not yet have a Coffey still installed to allow the production of grain whiskey. Therefore, as Tullamore Dew is a blend of all three varieties of Irish whiskey, the grain whiskey component of the blend will continue to be sourced from Midleton until phase two is completed.

As of 2015, the whiskey sells about 950,000 cases per year (an amount that has doubled since 2005).

[nearby type="distillery"]This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Tullamore Dew, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.Information correct as of 22/05/2020

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