Kilbeggan Single Pot Still is made in the traditional Irish style — a mash of malted and unmalted barley, distilled on the small pot stills at Kilbeggan Distillery in County Westmeath. Kilbeggan, licensed in 1757, is often cited as the oldest licensed distillery in Ireland, and after decades of silence it was returned to working production by Cooley's John Teeling, with whiskey flowing again from its own stills.
Single pot still is the distinctively Irish style: the inclusion of unmalted barley alongside malted gives a whiskey its trademark creamy texture and peppery spice, and it is the style that once ruled the world before Prohibition and independence flattened the Irish industry. Kilbeggan's revival of pot still distillation on its own historic equipment is part of the wider Irish renaissance of recent years.
The nose shows the style clearly: green apple and barley sugar leading, then the signature clove-and-spice prickle that says pot still, with vanilla oak settling underneath. On the palate it is creamy and full-bodied — the unmalted barley doing its textural work — orchard fruit and honey up front, then cracked pepper and cinnamon, and a mouth-coating cereal richness that lingers.
The finish is long and warming, the pepper persisting with toasted oak and a sweet malty echo. Bottled at 43% ABV, it has the backbone the style demands, and it stands as a genuine pot still whiskey from a distillery with more history than most.
Proof that Kilbeggan is not just a name on a bottle — it is a working distillery with something to say.
