One town, two distilleries and a vintage that changes every year.

Midleton is three things at once: a market town in East Cork, the distillery that has stood there since the nineteenth century, and the whiskey brand that took the distillery’s name. The brand is best known through Midleton Very Rare, which English Wikipedia describes as a premium Irish whiskey made by Irish Distillers, a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard, at the New Midleton Distillery. It was launched in 1984, English Wikipedia says, to celebrate the whiskeys made in Midleton.

The distillery came first. English Wikipedia’s history of the Old Midleton Distillery, drawing on Peter Townsend’s The Lost Distilleries of Ireland and Alfred Barnard’s 1887 survey of the distilleries of the United Kingdom, says the buildings began as a woollen mill and were later used as military barracks before the brothers James, Daniel and Jeremiah Murphy bought the site in 1825 and turned it into a distillery. In 1868 it joined the Cork Distilleries Company, a group formed the year before from several Cork distilleries.

In 1966 the Cork Distilleries Company merged with John Jameson & Son and John Power & Son to form the Irish Distillers Group, English Wikipedia says, and the new group chose to concentrate its whiskey-making in Midleton. A new distillery was built beside the old one, and in July 1975 production moved there. English Wikipedia lists Pernod Ricard’s acquisition of Irish Distillers in 1988. Today the New Midleton Distillery, which English Wikipedia calls the largest in Ireland, makes Jameson, Powers, Redbreast, Green Spot and Midleton Very Rare among others. The old distillery reopened as a visitor centre, the Jameson Experience, in 1992.

Early vintages of Midleton Very Rare, English Wikipedia says, included whiskey from the neighbouring old distillery; newer vintages use whiskey distilled at the new one. It is a blend of pot still and grain whiskeys, matured in ex-bourbon American oak barrels.

A new bottling every year, and a signature on every bottle.

What sets Midleton Very Rare apart as a brand is its rhythm. A new bottling is made each year from whiskeys picked from the Midleton warehouses, English Wikipedia says, and each bottle is individually numbered and signed by the master distiller and sold in a wooden display case.

Three names cover the series so far. English Wikipedia says Barry Crockett created the whiskey and oversaw it until he retired in 2013, after 47 years at the Midleton distilleries. His father, Max Crockett, had been master distiller before him, Whisky Magazine reported. Brian Nation succeeded Barry Crockett in 2013; The Drinks Business reported in June 2020 that Nation was leaving Irish Distillers and that Kevin O’Gorman, who had joined Midleton in 1998 as a distiller under Crockett and had been master of maturation since 2007, would take over. Nation made the 2020 vintage, and O’Gorman’s first, the 2021 vintage, was brought forward to February instead of the usual autumn release to mark the handover, Whisky Magazine and Drinks International reported in 2021.

The bottle has also been redesigned. Packaging Insights reported in January 2018 that Midleton Very Rare 2017 arrived in a new bottle designed by the London agency Nude and made by Allied Glass, its body modelled on a writer’s ink well and the dip in its shoulder on a pen nib, a nod to Ireland’s literary history. Nude Brand Creation went on to design the packaging for later special editions.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Irish whiskey names: Redbreast, Teeling, Powers, Kilbeggan, Writers’ Tears, Green Spot and Midleton. Irish whiskey brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a hotel bar.

An Irish whiskey brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whiskey is actually distilled, matured and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whiskey is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From the annual vintage to the rarest casks.

Around the annual vintage the Midleton name has carried a series of rarer releases. English Wikipedia records a 30th Anniversary Pearl Edition in September 2014, for which Barry Crockett returned from retirement to work with Brian Nation, and a single pot still whiskey named Barry Crockett Legacy in his honour. Dair Ghaelach was finished in virgin Irish oak, a first for Irish whiskey, English Wikipedia says, and Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2016 placed it third among its world whiskies of the year.

The oldest releases look back to the old distillery. Whisky Magazine reported in 2020 that the Silent Distillery Collection would be six releases of whiskey from the Old Midleton Distillery, one a year until 2025, the distillery’s 200th anniversary. Chapter One was a 45-year-old single malt laid down in 1974 under Max Crockett, decanted into hand-blown, etched crystal by Waterford Crystal and shown in cabinets made from reclaimed whiskey-vat wood. The 2025 vintage, made by O’Gorman, marked the distillery’s 200th year, The Whiskey Wash reported.

The name needs a little care. Midleton is also the town, and the Old and New Midleton distilleries are places rather than brands; the title Viscount Midleton belonged to the landowners who sold the original site. The whiskey brand’s own site is midletonveryrare.com, and the same distillery is home to Jameson, which has its own guide.

For a design guide, Midleton shows how a whiskey can make its maker part of the brand: one name shared by a town and a distillery, a new vintage every year and a master distiller’s signature on every bottle. Compare Redbreast, the single pot still whiskey from the same distillery, and Powers, another Irish Distillers whiskey made in Midleton. For this guide we use cask amber, oak brown and ink black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Midleton’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.