From Portland Brew Tanks to Dublin Pot Stills: The Making of Alex Chasko
The story of how Dublin got its whiskey back is, at its core, a story about curiosity — the kind that doesn't stop at the surface of a pint glass. Long before Alex Chasko was shaping the profile of modern Irish single malts as the master distiller and blender for Teeling Whiskey, he was a 19-year-old chemistry student pulling summer shifts at BridgePort Brewing Company in 1990s Portland, Oregon. The Pacific Northwest was experiencing one of the most electric periods in American brewing history, and Chasko had a front-row seat. But while his classmates were simply enjoying the ride, he was interrogating it.
While his peers were enjoying the Pacific Northwest's fledgling craft beer explosion, Chasko was obsessing over the underlying science in his pint glass. The questions he asked himself back then reveal a mind that was never going to be satisfied with just pulling handles. "How do you create that floral, fruity flavor in there?" Chasko recalls while trying beers. "Why does it taste that way? Is that a roasted flavor? I guess that's vanilla, isn't it? Where does that come from?" Those questions — deceptively simple, technically deep — became the engine of an entire career.
For Chasko, answering those flavor questions meant looking at brewing and distilling as two sides of the same technical coin — both rooted in the chemistry of grains, yeast, and heat. That scientific curiosity led him across the Atlantic to Scotland's Heriot-Watt University for a master's degree in brewing and distilling, though explaining the jump from Pacific Northwest taps to an Irish distillery still takes a moment. As Chasko himself puts it with characteristic bluntness: "How does a brewer from Portland, OR, end up in Ireland making Irish whiskey? So it's not a straight path, I can tell you that."
After securing a job at Seattle's Pyramid Brewing, Chasko set his sights on undertaking a master's at Heriot-Watt's International Centre for Brewing and Distilling. During his time at Heriot-Watt, Chasko met a woman from Tipperary who would eventually become his wife and lead him to Ireland to live. That personal thread — a romance born in a Scottish lecture hall — quietly set the geographic coordinates for what would become one of the most consequential careers in the modern Irish whiskey industry.
The Cooley Years: Building an Experimental Foundation
Before Chasko ever walked through the doors of a Teeling facility, he was already deep inside Ireland's whiskey world. Chasko previously worked as innovation manager at Cooley Distillery — the pioneering independent distillery built by John Teeling in 1987 — and had a close working relationship with the family. Cooley was, in its own way, a rebellion against the consolidated Irish whiskey establishment — an independent operation that dared to produce peated and unpeated expressions, single malts, and blended whiskeys at a time when the category was dominated by a handful of large players. For a man trained to ask why flavors work the way they do, it was exactly the right school.
Among the innovations Chasko remembers trialing at Cooley were Concannon, a whiskey finished in Petite Sirah barrels from the California winery of the same name, and Connemara aged in casks made from 5,000-year-old bog oak — a project that would stand out for its uniqueness even among today's crowded field of cask finishes. These were not safe, incremental experiments. They were exactly the sort of boundary-testing work that craft brewers had normalized on the West Coast of the United States years earlier — the same culture Chasko had absorbed standing over a brew kettle in Portland. His time at Cooley transformed that instinct into professional discipline.
Then came a turning point that would reshape the entire Irish whiskey map. When Cooley was sold to Beam in 2011, the Teelings negotiated a key reserve of thousands of mature casks as part of the deal. That cache of aged spirit — years in the making, diverse in character — would become the financial and creative foundation on which the new Teeling enterprise would be built. That legacy stock gave Chasko an immediate playground of aged single malts to blend and finish under the new Teeling label while construction began on their own facility.
Dublin's Long Fall from Whiskey Greatness
To understand what Teeling's 2015 opening actually meant, you have to understand how far Dublin had fallen from its former position as one of the world's great whiskey capitals. The city's relationship with distillation runs extraordinarily deep. The Teeling family's involvement in the whiskey industry dates back to 1782 when Walter Teeling established a small craft distillery on Marrowbone Lane in the Liberties area of Dublin. This period marked the golden age of Irish whiskey, with Dublin at its epicenter, celebrated worldwide for its quality and craftsmanship.
Dublin became a whiskey hub, with many distilleries clustering around the River Liffey. By the 1700s, Dublin housed famous distilleries like Jameson and Powers. The Dublin distillers specialized in rich, triple-distilled pot still whiskey, known for its smoothness. The 1823 Excise Act legalized distilling under license, boosting the legitimacy of Dublin's distilleries, and by the 19th century, Dublin was one of the world's leading whiskey producers. At this time there were over 37 different distilleries in Dublin alone.
That dominance didn't collapse overnight. It eroded over decades under the combined weight of economic depression, political upheaval, shifting trade relationships, and corporate consolidation. Dublin's pot still whiskey production nearly vanished in the 20th century, as Jameson, Powers, and the Spot whiskeys decamped in the depressed 1970s, merging and reconstituting to the west as Irish Distillers in Midleton, County Cork. A city that had once housed nearly four dozen working distilleries was left with none. The pot stills went cold. The warehouses emptied. The craft migrated west, and Dublin — once a synonym for Irish whiskey quality — became merely a name on bottles produced elsewhere.
Coupled with trade wars, American Prohibition, and aggressive corporate consolidation, the industry was gutted, leaving the entire island with just three operating distilleries by the late 2000s. That number is staggering in context: a country with centuries of distilling heritage, home to the style that arguably seeded global whiskey culture, reduced to three facilities. The lights had nearly gone out entirely.
The Teeling Family Returns: A Generational Play
The story of Teeling's revival is inseparable from the larger Teeling family saga. John Teeling, father of Teeling Whiskey founders Jack and Stephen, is widely regarded as the king of the Irish whiskey renaissance. John founded the Cooley Distillery in 1987 and brought full-scale production back to Kilbeggan Distillery in 2007. When he sold Cooley to Beam in 2011 for a reported $95 million, he passed the baton to the next generation, and Jack and Stephen Teeling made their intentions clear.
In 2012, the Teeling legacy experienced a remarkable revival thanks to Jack and Stephen Teeling, descendants of Walter Teeling. Recognizing an opportunity to rejuvenate Dublin's rich distilling heritage, they founded the Teeling Whiskey Company. Their goal was to bring innovation and new energy to the traditional industry while honoring their family's storied past. Their instinct was not simply to plant a flag — it was to plant it specifically in Dublin, in the Liberties, in the shadow of the same streets where Walter Teeling had first lit a still more than two centuries earlier.
"If I was ever going to do it," Jack Teeling has said, "I wanted to revive the name in the city centre, and bring that kind of modern energy to a very traditional category." That tension — between honoring a historic identity and refusing to be imprisoned by it — defines everything Teeling has built. Teeling loves to remind visitors that Dublin whiskey was never a pastoral thing. "A lot of people think of whiskey as a rural industry," he says. "But Irish whiskey evolved around ports — Dublin, Cork, Belfast." It was always an urban industry, shaped by trade, commerce, and the movement of goods between Ireland and the wider world.
Opening Day and What It Represented
The Teeling Whiskey Distillery opened its doors in 2015 as the first new distillery in Dublin for over 125 years, reviving this long heritage of urban whiskey production in this famous old Dublin distilling quarter. The symbolism was unmistakable, and the location was deliberate. Teeling is located in the historical Liberties area, a short stroll from where Walter Teeling first began distilling back in 1782. The copper pot stills that now occupy the production floor — three custom copper pot stills named Rebecca, Natalie, and Alison after Teeling family members — produce spirit in a neighborhood that once defined the world's opinion of Irish whiskey.
Depicted on the center of Teeling Whiskey's label is an image of a phoenix spreading its wings. As the reopening of the Teeling family distillery represents a rebirth of the Irish whiskey industry in Dublin, the phoenix displayed on every Teeling bottle is meant to represent the industry itself rising from the ashes. It's a piece of branding that earns its symbolism rather than simply borrowing it.
How a Craft Beer Mindset Rewrote Irish Whiskey Rules
When Alex Chasko came aboard as Teeling's first employee, he brought something the Irish whiskey industry had rarely seen from within its own ranks: the experimental fearlessness of the American craft brewing movement. To revitalize urban Dublin distilling, Chasko relied heavily on the fearless, experimental mindset he honed in the West Coast craft beer scene. In the 1990s and early 2000s, American craft brewers were treating every ingredient — hops, yeast strains, adjuncts, barrel types — as a variable to be pushed, inverted, or recombined. That spirit of perpetual experimentation was exactly what Irish whiskey needed.
The connection Chasko and the Teeling brothers found went beyond professional compatibility. It was a shared vision about where the category needed to go. As Chasko recalls of the period after Cooley's sale: "Everyone else was getting off the ship, and we were like, we're moving back. It definitely gave me that feeling of like, yes, it's a downturn in the economy, but there are opportunities still. One of them was meeting up with the Teelings and realizing that we shared an interest in where we thought Irish whiskey was going to go — that it was going to be flavor-led, that it was going to be the premiumization of the category."
The Cask Program: Where the West Coast Meets the Old World
That bold direction manifests in Teeling's restless cask maturation and finishing program. While traditionalists might stick strictly to ex-bourbon or sherry oak, Chasko treats maturation as a constantly evolving canvas. Over the years, he's experimented with Aquavit casks and Negroni cocktail barrels to a five-year-in-the-making rum cask collaboration with Venezuela's Santa Teresa. These are not gimmicks. They reflect the same intellectual framework Chasko first developed staring into a pint glass at BridgePort — asking what creates a flavor, tracing it back to its source, and then figuring out how to use that knowledge intentionally.
Since Teeling got started by selling Cooley-made stock while its own spirit aged, Chasko used novel casks to create a diverse range right out of the gate. In the early days, there were single malts finished in Muscat, white Burgundy, Carcavelos — categories of wine that most whiskey drinkers had never encountered in the context of Irish spirit. The approach generated immediate attention in the whiskey press and helped establish that Teeling's portfolio wasn't going to be a nostalgia exercise. It was going to push forward.
The core range reflects that same ambition. Small Batch is a premium blend, matured in ex-bourbon barrels before being finished in ex-rum barrels for rum raisin and tropical fruit notes. The Single Grain whiskey is uniquely fully matured in new world Cabernet Sauvignon red wine barrels from California and matured in French oak barrels. Teeling Single Malt uses a combination of two yeast types, two grain types, as well as a combination of wine casks and virgin oak casks to impact flavor and complexity. And the flagship Single Malt has collected serious hardware along the way: it was voted "World's Best Irish Single Malt" at the 2017 World Whiskies Awards.
The Single Pot Still Challenge: Reviving a Near-Extinct Style
Of all Teeling's production ambitions, perhaps none carried more historical weight than attempting to revive single pot still whiskey in Dublin. This style — made from a combination of malted and unmalted barley run through copper pot stills — was once the defining characteristic of Dublin distilling. Most whiskey drinkers only know the flavors of modern single pot still Irish whiskeys like Redbreast and Powers, all made at Midleton. In its early forays into reviving this genre, Teeling discovered that the bold flavors of the antique single pot still expressions had their own personas. It tracked down some antique Irish whiskeys, opening old Dublin-made bottles of mid-20th century Powers and Jameson.
What those old bottles revealed was sobering. "Those pot stills tasted totally different from what's being made today," says Teeling master distiller Alex Chasko. "I don't think people would like it." The old Dublin pot still style was far more assertive — funkier, oilier, more raw — than the polished expressions that have come to define modern Irish whiskey. Rather than trying to replicate antique character wholesale, Chasko developed something that bridged old tradition and modern palate. Unlike Midleton's 60:40 mashbill of barley and malt, Teeling chose a 50:50 ratio based on experience with small batches produced by the Teelings when their father John owned Kilbeggan Distillery. The result was a pot still whiskey rooted in Dublin's heritage but calibrated for a contemporary drinker.
The production operation itself is substantial. The distillery operates with a three-tonne mash, and is distilling seven days a week. In one recent year, Teeling distilled just over half a million litres of pure alcohol-equivalent of single malt and pot still spirit. That's a meaningful volume for an independent urban distillery, and it speaks to how quickly the operation has scaled since its 2015 opening.
The thing Chasko says he is personally most proud of is that Teeling has distilled spirit with the use of non-standard grains and malt. For example, Teeling uses specialty malt in its single malt to bring out more roasted, chocolate, and toffee flavors. That deliberate reach into specialty malt character — a clear echo of the craft brewing world Chasko came from — puts Teeling's single malt in a flavor territory that few Irish whiskeys occupy.
The Broader Irish Whiskey Revival: Boom, Recalibration, and What Comes Next
Teeling's arrival in 2015 didn't just reopen a Dublin distillery — it became a signal flare for the whole Irish whiskey category. What followed was an unprecedented boom that saw the category balloon to roughly 40 distilleries — a rapid expansion that has recently given way to a period of market recalibration and contraction as younger operations find their footing. The Irish whiskey renaissance has entered a more complex phase, one that will separate operations with genuine craft identity from those that were simply riding a rising tide.
As Teeling celebrates its 10th anniversary, the past decade has been about building — first reviving Dublin's distilling heritage, then establishing a signature Teeling whiskey style. But the next 10 years are already quietly taking shape. For an industry that spent decades contracting, this is both a promising and precarious moment. The brands that survive the shakeout will be those that built genuine flavor identities rather than simply capitalizing on the category's growing global profile.
Teeling's position within that landscape is secure in ways that newer entrants cannot claim. Teeling Whiskey's revival in Dublin marked a turning point in the Irish whiskey industry, with a focus on premiumization and innovative cask maturation techniques. By balancing high-end prestige with approachable innovation, Teeling has established itself as an enduring institution in Dublin's distilling scene, creating new occasions to engage consumers and ensure a rich distilling future for the city.
An American Voice in an Old Irish Argument
There's something quietly significant about the fact that one of the most important figures in the Irish whiskey revival is an American from Oregon. The Irish whiskey industry has historically been protective of its identity — and for good reason, given how much that identity was eroded by corporate consolidation and foreign ownership over the 20th century. But the global reach of Teeling's ambitions required a global perspective, and Chasko brought exactly that.
The master distiller and blender at Teeling Whiskey Company in Dublin oversees a portfolio that includes many styles of Irish whiskey, but his roots lie in the microbrewing scene of the 1990s Pacific Northwest. That background gave him a reference library of flavor-building techniques that had no real parallel in traditional Irish distilling. Craft brewing taught an entire generation of American producers how to think about raw ingredients, fermentation character, and finishing processes in ways that the Scotch and Irish traditions, for all their depth, had never fully formalized. Chasko translated that fluency into the language of pot stills and cask warehouses.
Chasko was awarded Master Distiller of the Year 2019 at the Icons of Whisky Ireland — recognition from the Irish industry itself that his approach, however unconventional in its origins, had produced something genuinely excellent. It's a rare thing for an outsider to earn that kind of institutional respect, and it speaks both to the quality of the work and the openness of a revitalized industry willing to be defined by results rather than tradition alone.
What Teeling Means for Whiskey Drinkers Paying Attention
For the American whiskey enthusiast, Teeling represents a compelling counterpoint to the familiar categories. Irish whiskey has long been positioned as the easy-drinking, approachable alternative to the bolder profiles of American bourbon or Scottish single malt. Teeling complicates that positioning — deliberately, productively. The cask-finishing experiments, the specialty malt usage, the commitment to single pot still expression, the premium tier releases — these are not the moves of a brand content to play the role of a beginner's whiskey.
While the Teeling family traces its whiskey roots back to 1782, the distillery actively challenges conventions through experimental maturation and cask selection. Visitors learn how these decisions influence flavor, texture, and aroma in Irish whiskey. That educational dimension — making the process visible and comprehensible — reflects the same ethos that made American craft brewing so culturally compelling in the 1990s. People drink better when they understand what they're drinking.
The Brabazon series, which Chasko has developed at Teeling, exemplifies the upper range of this ambition. Volume One and Two of the Brabazon series are port- and sherry-focused single malts, but at a higher ABV than normal — expressions designed to reward the kind of slow, considered attention that serious spirit drinkers bring to their best bottles. They're not mass-market products. They're statements about what Irish whiskey can be when the ceiling is raised.
A decade in, Teeling has certainly cemented its place at the heart of Ireland's whiskey revival. As the brand now looks to the next 10 years, its focus is clear: to keep pushing Irish whiskey forward, one cask at a time. For a category that spent the better part of a century in managed decline, that forward momentum — anchored in a working Dublin distillery, driven by an Oregon chemist who never stopped asking why a flavor tastes the way it does — is the most Irish of stories: a long fall, a slow recovery, and then something that looks very much like a renaissance.
The pot stills named Rebecca, Natalie, and Alison run seven days a week in the Liberties. The mash is three tonnes. The warehouses are filling. And the man overseeing all of it still carries the curiosity of a kid working his first shift at a Portland brewery, staring into a glass and asking the question that changes everything: where does that flavor come from?
