The Teeling Whiskey Company was set up in 2012 by Jack Teeling, following Jim Beam's 2011 purchase of the Cooley whiskey distillery founded by his father John Teeling in 1987. Jack Teeling had been managing director at Cooley but left soon after the Beam acquisition to found TWC. 

Jack Teeling's brother Stephen Teeling briefly took on a marketing role with Beam after the takeover, but left to join Teeling Whiskey Company in 2013. Their father John Teeling, meanwhile, would go on to purchase the old Great Northern Brewery building in Dundalk from Diageo and turn it into the Great Northern Distillery.

As part of the $95m Cooley deal, the canny Teelings secured a parcel of 16,000 casks from Cooley's maturing stock to bottle while their new project was under construction. Crucially, this parcel included not only casks of Cooley whiskey, but also some outstanding casks from other Irish distilleries that the Teelings had amassed through reciprocal arrangements and judicious acquisition during their tenure.

The Teeling Whiskey Company’s first releases included long-aged Irish whiskey from this exceptional parcel and quickly made waves, with the Teeling 24-Year-Old winning Best Irish Single Malt at the World Whisky Awards in 2016 and a later batch being crowned World’s Best Single Malt at the same awards in 2019.

In 2015 the new Teeling Whiskey Distillery was opened in Newmarket Square in the Liberties area of Dublin - just a few hundred metres from Marrowbone Lane, where the Teeling’s ancestor Walter Teeling had founded a distillery in 1782. The new Teeling Distillery was the first to open in Dublin since the 1880s and is equipped with two wooden and four steel washbacks and three Italian copper stills for a distillery capacity of 500,000 litres per annum.

In 2017 a non-controlling share of the Teeling company was acquired by Bacardi, the details of which have remained private.

Today the Teeling Whiskey Company company bottles several different ranges of whiskeys under the Teeling label, encompassing their own peated and unpeated single malt whiskey, their own single pot still whiskey - the first whiskey of this style to be distilled in Dublin since the closure of Jameson’s Bow St distillery in 1971 - and single malt and grain whiskies from other Irish distilleries acquired during or subsequent to the Cooley deal. 

The vast majority of Teeling’s whiskey releases include wine finished casks, with rum and Sauternes casks particularly favoured, and most bottlings are at 46% or cask strength without chill filtration.

At the time of writing, the Teeling Single Pot Still and Teeling Blackpitts peated single malt contain 100% Teeling distillery whiskey, with the rest of their releases using differing proportions of other Irish whiskeys. The Teeling Whiskey Company had, by 2021, amassed over 300 awards and nominations from international spirit competitions, and their distillery visitor centre has also won several awards and gives one of the best distillery tours in Ireland.