Teeling was speaking to drinks bulletin in the lead-up to St Patrick's Day 2016, with the company having recently launched ‘The Revival’ – a limited edition 15 Year Old Single Malt – to commemorate the opening of its new distillery in Dublin.
He said it had been a “gamble” for the fledgling company to place a brand ambassador in the Australian market, where it is distributed by Pinnacle Drinks and SouthTrade International.
“It was really a test case - we said we would try a few things,” he said.
“The more we were trying the more we could see that the opportunity was bigger, hence why we put another person into Sydney. It’s even a bigger opportunity than we originally thought.”
Stephen Teeling and brother Jack launched the brand in 2012, having retained stock from the Cooley Distillery, which the family and other shareholders sold to Beam in 2011.
Teeling said that Australia was always a priority market for Teeling, which is now available in 46 countries.
“Brown spirits in general were starting to really explode in Australia. The Irish whiskey taste profile was very well liked and the bar and culinary scene were very, very similar to the profile of consumers we were looking for,” he said.
“We could see that with a bit of focus on key markets like Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and a bit of Perth with a small team, that if we did the right things we could get traction.”
Teeling said there had been good synergies in the SouthTrade portfolio with its other whisky brands such as Australia’s Starward and Scotland’s Bruichladdich.
“It’s a very small whisky portfolio but all of the brands that are in it really fit with a lot of the ethos that we’re about - innovation and quality,” he said.
Irish whiskey is currently the fastest growing spirits category in the world, with projected growth of 60 per cent over the next three to four years. It now outsells single malt Scotch in the US.
“Jameson’s done a great job of growing the market and being that big market leader that every category needs,” Teeling said.
“What we want to do is not compete with the big guys but just offer a few easy to understand points of difference and just challenge the palate a bit more.”
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