Teeling Releases a New 24-Year-Old Whiskey in Collaboration With the Notre Dame Fighting Irish

It’s been exactly a century since Notre Dame achieved a perfect season en route to its first-ever College Football National Championship. To commemorate the occasion, the Fighting Irish have — naturally — teamed up with a celebrated Irish Whiskey brand. The result of the collaboration is Teeling Phoenix Legends, a series of three Irish single malts that begins with a rare 24-year-old expression set to retail for $500 a bottle. 

“The partnership between Teeling and Notre Dame Athletics grew out of shared values and mutual respect after Notre Dame spent time at The Teeling Whiskey Distillery in Dublin, offering a unique opportunity to connect with the 50 million Notre Dame fans while enhancing the fan experience and supporting the growth of Teeling in the U.S. market,” says Stephen Teeling, sales and marketing director at the Teeling Whiskey Company.

For this bottling, the award-winning whiskey makers at Teeling took a cache of well-matured malt and entered it into casks that previously held Rivesaltes — the oft-overlooked style of fortified wine from the South of France, which is actually an ideal seasoning for the soft and round notes of the base whiskey it finishes. Indeed, it didn’t take more than a few months in these sorts of barrels for the 92-proof spirit to begin accumulating a lingering thread of strawberry and melon fruit — a sweet accoutrement to the toasted walnut and ginger spice characterizing the liquid’s initial nose and palate. 

“We’ve experimented with many different casks here at Teeling Whiskey, in particular fortified wine casks,” Alex Chasko, Teeling’s master distiller, told Food & Wine. “We knew this one had to be special and the unique tropical fruit, butterscotch, and spice notes that the Rivesaltes cask gave to this single malt made the decision very easy for us in the end! It stood out to us as a truly unique Irish Whiskey that we wanted the Notre Dame fans to experience and remember long after they tried it.”

One caveat, though: There may be some formidable competition when trying to get your hands on a bottle. As we’ve already mentioned, this is a preciously allocated release. A total of just 1,000 bottles are set for shelves. Presented in a bespoke Notre Dame-branded bottle and box, it was guaranteed, from kickoff, to be a collectible for fans of the legendary sports program. But the fact that today’s whiskey connoisseurs won’t balk at its $500-plus price tag is a testament to how far premiumization in the category has progressed in recent years. 

While scotch fans have long been accustomed to spending a small fortune on their spirit of choice, triple-digit pricing in the Irish sector is a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon. According to the Distilled Spirits Council, sales of super-premium Irish Whiskey have grown 6,000 percent since 2002. And the category can now lay claim to the world’s most expensive bottle of whiskey ever sold. As Food & Wine reported earlier in the year, a lone decanter of the Emerald Isle by The Craft Irish Whiskey Company sold for a cool $2.8 million dollars — breaking the record previously held by The Macallan Valerio Adami 1926, which sold for $2.7 million at Sotheby’s.

A bottle of Phoenix Legends is an absolute bargain by comparison. If you’re looking for a consolation prize, fans of both the Fighting Irish Football team, as well as Irish whiskey, can hope to get their hands on an Irish Spirit Stadium Jacket, hand-crafted by noted streetwear designer Kevin Leonel. The specialized merch is timed to drop with the release of the new Teeling expression. It’s a stylish way to stay warm this winter.