Triple Distilled Communications

God bless the American taxman. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau – or TTB as it is known to drinks nerds – is a US federal agency within the Department of the Treasury. It regulates alcohol taxation, production, importation, and labelling, meaning that before most alcoholic products can be imported into or sold across state lines in the United States, the importer or producer must obtain a Certificate of Label Approval, known as a COLA. The company submits the proposed label artwork and product details, and the TTB checks that the label contains the required information and is not misleading.

Then the best bit: Approved labels are placed in the publicly searchable TTB COLA Registry. This is why new whiskey labels sometimes become visible before an official product announcement: regulatory approval is often obtained well in advance of a planned launch. However, approval does not guarantee that the product will be released, as plans can be changed, postponed or cancelled. But as a way to snoop on larger drinks firms and what their plans might be, it is a great place to have a nose. And lo, this week a new offshoot of Midleton Very Rare landed there. Here are the basics –

Midleton Very Rare Irish Chestnut Edition appears to be part of a proposed Rare Woods Collection. It is a single pot still Irish whiskey distilled and matured at Midleton Distillery in County Cork and bottled in Ireland. The whiskey is triple distilled, non-chill filtered and bottled at cask strength at 56.1% ABV in a 700 ml bottle. Its distinguishing feature is a finishing period in virgin Irish sweet chestnut hogshead casks. Midleton states that Master Distiller Kevin O’Gorman and his team partnered with Cappoquin House to source the Irish sweet chestnut, and the back label specifically thanks Sir Charles Keane.

The Keane family has been associated with Cappoquin in County Waterford since the eighteenth century. The family’s hereditary baronetcy was created in 1801, and successive generations were involved in politics, the military, journalism, banking, agriculture and Irish public life. Cappoquin House, their family seat, is a Georgian mansion built in 1779 overlooking the River Blackwater. It was burned during the Civil War in 1923 – wasn’t everything? – but was rebuilt by Sir John Keane. The estate is also known for its gardens and mature trees and is now cared for by Sir Charles Keane, the seventh baronet.

It isn’t that random a selection – the Jameson family’s Tourin House also sits an estate on the River Blackwater near Cappoquin. Tourin House is only a few kilometres from Cappoquin House, and Andrea Jameson painted the walled garden at Cappoquin House for a book by Robert O’Byrne.

MVR was created by Master Distiller Barry Crockett and first released in 1984 as Irish Distillers’ prestige whiskey. Its core expression is the annual Vintage Release, a limited blend of selected single pot still and grain whiskeys matured mainly in seasoned American oak. It is probably the best known premium Irish whiskey, by some stretch. In Ireland it was the whiskey you gave to impress someone, or bought to mark a special occassion, or opened and shared for the pure aura of it. In more recent times it became collector catnip and somehow lost a lot of is lustre, especially post-redesign.

The range has passed through three main Master Distiller eras. Barry Crockett established it and oversaw the releases until his retirement in 2013. Brian Nation selected the vintages from 2014 to 2020, and Kevin O’Gorman has led the range since 2021. The annual Vintage remains the centre of the brand, but recent editions have placed greater emphasis on the technical composition of the blend.

The first major move beyond the annual blend came with Barry Crockett Legacy, introduced in 2011. This was a permanent single pot still expression rather than a grain-and-pot-still blend and showed that Midleton Very Rare could become a wider family of prestige whiskeys rather than a single yearly bottling. Over the past decade, the range has diversified significantly. Dair Ghaelach, first released in 2015, introduced single pot still whiskey finished in virgin Irish oak. The casks were made from oak sourced from named Irish estates and forests, including Grinsell’s Wood, Bluebell Forest, Knockrath Forest, Kylebeg Wood and Kilranelagh Wood. Individual bottlings were often linked to particular trees. Dair Ghaelach shifted the focus towards Irish forestry, sustainability, wood provenance, cask strength and traceability.

The Silent Distillery Collection, launched in 2020 and completed in 2025, created an ultra-luxury heritage strand. It consisted of six annual releases of whiskey aged between 45 and 50 years from the Old Midleton Distillery, which closed in 1975. The series included styles very different from the core blend, such as a peated single malt and exceptionally old single pot still whiskey. Its elaborate Waterford Crystal decanters and presentation cabinets placed Midleton in the very high-end collector market, with pricetags loitering around the 45-50k mark.

Midleton also expanded its use of rare international woods. Forêt de Tronçais used mature grain and pot still whiskeys finished for several years in specially selected French oak casks from the Tronçais forest. The series combined wood provenance, French cooperage and luxury presentation, with pricing far above that of the annual Vintage Release.

The 40th Anniversary Ruby Edition combined whiskeys laid down during the eras of Barry Crockett, Brian Nation and Kevin O’Gorman and finished the blend in a ruby-port cask. The 200th Anniversary Edition was a 28-year-old single pot still whiskey bottled at high strength and included whiskey matured in Japanese Mizunara oak.

The Irish Chestnut Edition labels suggest a further stage in this diversification. It also tells the story that IDL are still pushing super premium product, which is a good sign. The mood is a little cool in Irish whiskey right now, but that is either an overdue correction in the market, a sustained blip, or nothing to worry about (LinkedIn is littered with lay-off posts so this isnt all just in my head). But TTB, source of so many great reveals, suggests the former is what we are living through. I downloaded CSVs of any and all Irish whiskey labels submitted in the last decade, specifically in the date range 1 June 2016 to 5 June 2026. This is the breakdown:

Annual Trend 1 June 2016 to 5 June 2026

*2016 and 2026 are partial years.

These are the producers which were most active on TTB in that time:

Most Active Since 2024 –

Most Active in 2025-2026

There is life in the old dog yet. MVR is growing, the new Midleton distillery is still being built, and folks will still want to lighten the equisite burden of being alive by tipping a few decent whiskeys of an evening. All is not lost, all is not lost.