Jameson vs Teeling vs Pearse Lyons vs Roe & Co: Which Dublin Distillery to Visit

Dublin had well over thirty working distilleries in the 1880s and the Liberties alone produced more whiskey than the whole of Scotland. Then Prohibition, the Anglo-Irish trade war and the loss of the Empire markets took the industry apart, and by 1976 not a single drop of whiskey was being distilled anywhere in the city. What has happened since 2015 is one of the genuinely good stories in Irish tourism: four distinct distillery visitor experiences within about a mile and a half of each other in Dublin 8, three of them in buildings that mean something, and two of them producing spirit again on the site where the original companies did.

That leaves visitors with a choice that nobody explains well. Jameson is the name everyone knows and the one every hotel concierge recommends. Teeling is the one whiskey people push at you. Roe & Co barely looks like a distillery tour at all. Pearse Lyons is in a church. This is a straight comparison of all four on price, length, format, what you actually drink and who each suits, so that you can work out the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin has for you specifically rather than for a generic visitor. It also answers the question most guides dodge — which of these places is actually distilling whiskey, and whether that matters.

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Quick Answer: Which Dublin Distillery Should You Visit?

If you are visiting one and you know nothing about whiskey, go to Jameson Bow St: forty-five guided minutes, €26, and a comparative tasting of Irish against Scotch and American that teaches you more in ten minutes than a year of drinking will. If you already like whiskey and want to see spirit actually being made, go to Teeling: €22, in the Liberties, with three working copper pot stills you can stand next to. If you would rather have a cocktail than a lecture, go to Roe & Co, which is built around blending and mixing rather than history. And if you want the most unusual hour in Dublin 8, go to Pearse Lyons, which is a distillery inside a deconsecrated medieval church with a graveyard tour attached.

For most people the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin offers is Teeling, on the simple grounds that it costs the least, it is a real working distillery, and the tour is aimed at people who came because they are interested rather than because it was on a list. Jameson is the better introduction and the better group activity; Teeling is the better distillery visit. If you have the budget for one upgrade rather than one extra tour, the Jameson blending class at €50 beats every €22–€26 standard ticket in the city, because you go home with a bottle you made.

	Jameson Bow St	Teeling	Roe & Co	Pearse Lyons
Where	Bow Street, Smithfield, D7	Newmarket, the Liberties, D8	James’s Street, D8	James’s Street, D8
Standard tour	€26 adult	€22 adult	Check operator	Check operator
Length	45 minutes	About an hour	40–60 minutes	About 60 minutes
Distilling on site?	No — moved to Cork in 1971	Yes	Yes	Yes
What you drink	Comparative tasting plus a full drink	Whiskey plus a cocktail, or 3–4 expressions	Cocktail-led	Three to five Pearse whiskeys
Best upgrade	Blending class, €50	Connoisseur Cask, €55	Blending workshop	Gin School, blending
The building	1780 distillery, redeveloped 2017	Purpose-built, opened 2015	Former Guinness power station	Deconsecrated St James’s Church
Best for	Beginners, groups, families	Whiskey people, value	Cocktail drinkers, non-purists	Curiosity, history, quiet

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First, the Thing Nobody Tells You: Which of These Actually Distil

This matters more than any other single fact when you are choosing, and it is systematically buried.

Nothing has been distilled at Jameson Bow St since 1971. Production moved to Midleton in County Cork, and Bow Street was reopened as a visitor centre in 1997 and redeveloped in 2017. It is a beautiful site with real history — John Jameson & Son operated there from 1780 — and there is a live maturation warehouse on the premises, the only one in Dublin, so casks genuinely are ageing there. But you will not see whiskey being made. Our full Jameson guide and the head-to-head with the brewery in Guinness Storehouse vs Jameson go further.

Teeling, Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons all do distil on site. Teeling opened in 2015 as the first new distillery in Dublin in 125 years and runs three copper pot stills, each named after one of the founder’s daughters, in a room you walk through. Roe & Co has stills in the old Guinness power station across from St James’s Gate. Pearse Lyons distils inside the shell of St James’s Church. If seeing a live still is the point of the exercise for you, that alone narrows the field from four to three and settles a lot of arguments.

Does it actually matter? Honestly, less than whiskey people insist. A distillery tour is mostly a story, a room and a tasting, and Jameson tells the best story and pours the most instructive tasting of the four. But if you have flown to Ireland partly to see whiskey being made, book somewhere that makes it.

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Jameson Distillery Bow St — the Big One

Bow Street in Smithfield, north of the river, ten minutes’ walk from the Four Courts and served by the Luas Red Line at Smithfield — see getting around Dublin if you are working out the tram. It is the most visited of the four by a wide margin, it is the one most people mean when they ask for the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin has, and it is very good at what it does.

The flagship Bow St. Experience is forty-five minutes, guided, in a group, and costs €26 for an adult, €23 for a senior or student, €12 for a 13-to-17-year-old and nothing at all for under-12s. The tour covers the site, the Jameson story from 1780, the collapse of Irish whiskey and the consolidation into Midleton, and then does the thing that justifies the ticket: a comparative tasting of Irish whiskey against a Scotch and an American whiskey, poured side by side, with a guide explaining triple distillation, unpeated malt and why the three taste so different. After that you get a full drink at the bar, made how you like it.

That comparative tasting is the single most useful fifteen minutes available to a whiskey beginner in Dublin, and it is why Jameson remains the right recommendation for a first visit even though it does not distil. The rest of the range covers a Secret Whiskey Tasting and a Cocktail Making Class at an hour each, a ten-minute Cask Draw, and the one worth knowing about:

The Whiskey Makers / Black Barrel blending class is €50 for ninety minutes, and it is the best-value organised whiskey experience in the city. You blend your own whiskey from component spirits, bottle it, label it and take it home; you get into the live maturation warehouse for a sample drawn straight from the cask; and you taste across the Whiskey Makers Series. For anyone with genuine interest it comfortably beats two standard €26 tickets. Opening hours are not reliably published — check jamesonwhiskey.com before you go.

The honest verdict on Jameson

Best in class for beginners, groups, hen and stag weekends and anyone who wants a guide rather than a building. Worst in class if the words “brand experience” make you wince, or if you specifically want to see whiskey being made. It is also the busiest, which means the group sizes are the largest of the four.

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Teeling — the Working Distillery in the Liberties

13–17 Newmarket, Dublin 8, in the heart of the Liberties, about fifteen minutes’ walk from St Patrick’s Cathedral through the oldest and least polished part of the city — the route is covered in our walking tours guide if you would rather have a guide for the streets too. Teeling opened in 2015 and was the first new distillery to operate in Dublin in 125 years, which makes it the physical centre of the city’s whiskey revival rather than a museum of it.

Open Monday to Friday 11:00 to 18:00, Saturday 11:00 to 19:00, and Sunday and bank holidays 11:00 to 18:00. The tour ladder is unusually clear and unusually good value:

• Teeling Tasting Tour, €22 — the standard guided tour with the Small Batch and a handcrafted whiskey cocktail at the end. A non-alcoholic version of the drink is available, which makes this the most workable of the four for a mixed group.
• Trinity Tasting Tour, €26 — the same tour with three whiskeys instead: Small Batch, Single Grain and Single Malt. This is the sweet spot, and at the same price as a standard Jameson ticket it is arguably the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin currently sells.
• Distillery Select Tasting Tour, €35 — four expressions including the Blackpitts Peated Single Malt and a Single Pot Still.
• Connoisseur Cask Collection, €55 — small groups, distillery exclusives, vintage single malts.
• Private tours for groups of fifteen or more, in several languages, priced on request.

On site there is the Bang Bang Bar and the Phoenix Café, both of which are worth staying in afterwards — the bar in particular is a genuinely good place to drink rather than a gift-shop annexe. Bookings on teelingdistillery.com.

The honest verdict on Teeling

The best all-round choice and the best value. You see the stills, the guides know their material and pitch it at people who are interested, the whiskey is good, and the Liberties setting gives the visit a sense of place that Bow Street’s redeveloped courtyard does not quite manage. The one caveat: the tour assumes a little more baseline interest than Jameson’s does, so if your group includes someone who does not care about whiskey at all, they will get less out of it.

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Roe & Co — the Cocktail One

James’s Street, Dublin 8, in the former Guinness power station directly opposite St James’s Gate — which is a lovely piece of Dublin symmetry, since the Roe distillery on Thomas Street was once the largest in Ireland and the biggest rival Guinness had for the Liberties’ grain. The surviving St Patrick’s Tower windmill behind Thomas Street is the last physical trace of it.

Roe & Co is Diageo-owned, opened in 2019, and is the least like a conventional distillery tour of the four. The experiences run roughly forty to sixty minutes and are built around blending and cocktail-making rather than a history walk: you are put behind a bench, given components and taught to build something. That is either exactly what you want or exactly what you do not.

Prices and opening days are not consistently published across ticketing sites and we do not have an operator-confirmed figure, so check roeandcowhiskey.com directly before you plan around it — and be aware that this is one of the two Dublin distilleries that closes on some weekdays. See our whiskey and wine experiences guide for the wider category.

The honest verdict on Roe & Co

Right for you if you drink cocktails more than you drink whiskey neat, if you want something participatory, or if you are already going to the Guinness Storehouse and want to make an afternoon of James’s Street. Wrong for you if you came for stills, casks and history — you will feel you have been to a very stylish bar rather than a distillery.

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Pearse Lyons — the One in a Church

121–122 James’s Street, Dublin 8, five minutes further west, inside the deconsecrated St James’s Church with its striking modern glass spire. This is the most unusual visitor experience in Dublin 8 and the one people talk about longest afterwards.

The Whiskey Tour & Tasting runs about sixty minutes and includes an introductory film about the founder, a tour of the graveyard, the still house with the distillers working, and a tasting of three to five Pearse whiskeys. The graveyard is not a novelty add-on: St James’s was the parish church of the Liberties’ distilling and brewing families, several of the founder’s own ancestors are buried in it, and the tour uses the headstones to tell the story of the industry that made this street. It is genuinely affecting and completely unlike anything else on this list.

Tours run hourly: Monday to Saturday the first is at 11:00 and the last at 17:00; on Sunday the first is at 12:00 and the last at 17:00. Closed 24–26 December and 1 January. Children under ten go free. Prices are not published on the operator’s site, so ring ahead or check pearselyonsdistillery.com. Other experiences — a Gin School, a Cocktail Experience, an Art of Irish Whiskey Blending session and a private VIP tour — are also unpriced online.

The honest verdict on Pearse Lyons

The most memorable building and the quietest tour, in a good way — group sizes are small and it does not feel like an attraction. Take it if you have already done one of the bigger tours, if you like ecclesiastical architecture, or if you want something in Dublin 8 that is not on a coach route. The lack of published pricing is a genuine irritation and means you cannot budget for it without a phone call.

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Head to Head: What You Actually Get for the Money

Working out the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin has for you means ignoring the branding, because all four brand themselves almost identically. Strip that out and the tours differ on four axes: how long you are there, how much whiskey you drink, whether you see production, and whether the format is a walk or an activity.

Axis	Best	Worst	Note
Value for money	Teeling at €22	Unpriced tours	Teeling Trinity at €26 is the sweet spot
Teaching quality	Jameson’s comparative tasting	Roe & Co	Jameson explains why Irish whiskey tastes as it does
Seeing production	Teeling	Jameson	Jameson has casks, not stills
The building	Pearse Lyons	Roe & Co	A church against a converted power station
Non-drinkers	Teeling	Roe & Co	Teeling offers a non-alcoholic cocktail as standard
Groups over ten	Jameson	Pearse Lyons	Bow St is built for volume
Best single upgrade	Jameson blending, €50	—	You go home with a bottle you made

One structural point worth making. All four standard tours cost between about €22 and €26 — roughly what a pint and a half in Temple Bar costs — and the €50 to €55 upgrades at Jameson and Teeling deliver disproportionately more. If you have €55 to spend on whiskey in Dublin, one upgraded experience beats two standard tours by a wide margin. If you have €25, take Teeling.

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Can You Do All Four in One Day?

People ask this constantly, usually because they have read four separate articles each naming a different place as the best whiskey distillery tour Dublin has. Physically, yes. Sensibly, no. Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons are five minutes apart on James’s Street, Teeling is fifteen minutes east through the Liberties, and Jameson is twenty-five minutes north across the river — so the walking is trivial. The problem is not geography, it is that four guided tours with four tastings inside eight hours means somewhere between eight and fifteen measures of whiskey, and by the third one you will not be able to taste anything and by the fourth you will not remember it.

Two in a day is the sensible maximum, and it works well: one in the late morning, lunch in the Liberties, one in the mid-afternoon. The best pairing is Teeling and Jameson — one working distillery, one historic site, one Liberties, one Smithfield, and a good walk between them along the quays. The second-best is Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons, which are effectively next door to each other and can be done in a single afternoon on James’s Street with the Guinness Storehouse in between if you have the stamina.

If you want to sample widely rather than tour repeatedly, do one distillery and then spend the evening in the whiskey bars, where a flight of four rare expressions will cost less than a second tour and teach you more.

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Which One Suits You?

There is no single best whiskey distillery tour Dublin can offer everybody, so here is the shortcut by traveller type.

• Never drunk Irish whiskey before — Jameson. The comparative tasting is the whole point.
• You know your Redbreast from your Green Spot — Teeling’s Distillery Select or Connoisseur Cask, then a whiskey bar.
• Travelling with someone who does not drink — Teeling, which builds a non-alcoholic option into the standard tour.
• A group of ten or more — Jameson for the standard tour, or Teeling’s private tour for fifteen-plus.
• Teenagers in the party — Jameson takes 13-to-17-year-olds at €12 and under-12s free; Pearse Lyons is free under ten.
• You want one thing to remember Dublin by — the Jameson blending class at €50. You leave with a bottle you blended.
• You would rather have a cocktail — Roe & Co.
• You have done Jameson before — Pearse Lyons, for a completely different hour.
• You are on a tight budget — Teeling at €22, and nothing else.

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Beyond the Big Four

The Dublin Liberties Distillery on Mill Street is the fifth of the group and sits between Teeling and St Patrick’s, in a converted tannery. The Liberties as a district now has more working drinks production per square kilometre than anywhere in Ireland, and the walk between Newmarket, Mill Street and James’s Street is a proper piece of industrial Dublin — see the Liberties guide for what else is on that route, including the Iveagh Markets, the Francis Street antique shops and the Brazen Head.

North of the river, Smithfield around Jameson has its own case for an afternoon: the Cobblestone’s traditional session, the Light House Cinema, the Saturday market and the Generator building. Our Smithfield and Stoneybatter guide covers it.

And if the goal is drinking rather than touring, Dublin’s whiskey bars are the better value proposition — the Palace Bar’s upstairs whiskey room, the Dingle Whiskey Bar, L. Mulligan Grocer in Stoneybatter. The whiskey bars guide ranks them, and the traditional pubs guide covers everywhere else.

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Gotchas

The things that most often go wrong when people book a Dublin distillery tour, in rough order of how much they cost you.

• Jameson does not distil at Bow Street and has not since 1971. There is a working maturation warehouse but no working still.
• Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons do not publish prices clearly online. Ring or check the operator before you budget. Aggregator sites disagree with each other.
• Some distilleries close on weekdays. Roe & Co in particular does not open seven days. Check the day you plan to go, not just the week.
• Tours are timed and do sell out, especially Jameson at weekends and in summer. Book online.
• Do not attempt more than two tours in a day. The tastings add up faster than people expect and the third one is wasted money.
• The Liberties and Smithfield are a twenty-five-minute walk apart. Allow for it, or use the Luas Red Line, which serves both.
• Under-18s can usually attend but not taste. Jameson charges €12 for 13–17s and nothing for under-12s; Pearse Lyons is free under ten.
• Dublin Castle is closed to visitors until January 2027, so do not build a Dublin 8 day around it — the Chester Beatty is closed on the same grounds until the end of December 2026.
• Duty-free is not always cheaper. Distillery-exclusive bottlings genuinely are exclusive; standard expressions are usually cheaper in a supermarket.

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FAQ: The Best Whiskey Distillery Tour Dublin Offers

Which distillery is best for beginners?

Jameson Bow St, without much argument. The forty-five-minute tour is built for people who have never thought about whiskey, and the comparative tasting — Irish against Scotch against American, poured side by side with someone explaining the differences — is the fastest useful education available anywhere in the city. It costs €26 and takes under an hour. Teeling is the better distillery; Jameson is the better first distillery.

Is Teeling or Jameson better?

Teeling if you want to see whiskey being made and get more for your money; Jameson if you want to be taught. Teeling’s standard tour is €22 against Jameson’s €26, it has three working copper pot stills you walk past, and its Trinity tour at €26 gives you three whiskeys where Jameson gives you a comparative tasting and a drink. Jameson has the better guides, the bigger story and the better upgrade. Most people who do both prefer Teeling; most people who do only one should probably do Jameson.

Can you do all four in one day?

You can walk it easily — the four sites are within about a mile and a half — but you should not. Four tours means four tastings and somewhere between eight and fifteen measures of whiskey in a day, and the palate is gone by the third. Two is the sensible maximum: one late morning, one mid-afternoon, with lunch in the Liberties in between. Teeling plus Jameson is the best pairing.

How much is a whiskey distillery tour in Dublin?

Between €22 and €26 for a standard tour at the two that publish prices — Teeling at €22 and Jameson at €26 — with upgrades running to €35 and €55 at Teeling and €50 for the Jameson blending class. Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons do not publish standard prices reliably, so check with them directly. As a rule of thumb, budget €25 for a tour and €50 if you want the version you will still be talking about.

Which Dublin distilleries actually make whiskey on site?

Teeling, Roe & Co and Pearse Lyons all distil in Dublin 8. Jameson does not — production moved to Midleton in County Cork in 1971 and Bow Street is a visitor centre with a working maturation warehouse attached. If watching spirit being made is the reason you are going, that fact should decide it for you.

Are distillery tours worth it if you do not drink?

Teeling is, because the standard tour includes a non-alcoholic version of the cocktail and the production floor is interesting regardless. Pearse Lyons works too, on the strength of the church and the graveyard. Jameson is more of a stretch, though under-12s go free and the tour itself is engaging. Roe & Co, which is built entirely around cocktails, is the one to skip.

Do you need to book a distillery tour in advance?

Yes for Jameson, which is timed-entry and sells out at weekends and through the summer. Strongly advisable for Teeling. Pearse Lyons runs hourly tours and is quieter, but the group sizes are small so a walk-up is not guaranteed. Booking online is also usually the only way to see current pricing.

What is the best value distillery experience in Dublin?

The Jameson blending class at €50 for ninety minutes, if you can stretch to it — you blend and bottle your own whiskey, get into the maturation warehouse and taste across the premium range, and you leave with something. For a straight tour, Teeling’s €22 standard or €26 Trinity is the best value in the city. Two standard tours at €26 each is the one combination that is poor value; spend the same money on one upgrade instead.

Where should I drink whiskey after the tour?

The Liberties and Smithfield both have good pubs within a few minutes of their distilleries — the Brazen Head near Thomas Street and the Cobblestone on Smithfield Square are the obvious two. For serious whiskey, the city’s specialist bars will pour you a flight of rare Irish expressions for less than a second tour costs. See the whiskey bars guide, and the best pint of Guinness if somebody in the group has had enough whiskey.

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Keep Planning

• Dublin Nightlife & Pubs — the parent guide to drinking in the city.
• Jameson Distillery Bow St — the full tour and tasting guide.
• Whiskey Bars in Dublin — where to drink rather than tour.
• The Liberties — the old distilling quarter, on foot.
• Whiskey & Wine Experiences — tastings, classes and private sessions.
• Guinness Storehouse vs Jameson — if you only have one paid afternoon.
• Traditional Pubs in Dublin — where locals actually drink.
• Best Dublin Experiences — everything worth booking in the city.

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Keep Reading

• Dublin Nightlife & Pubs: The Complete Guide
• Jameson Distillery Bow St: The Complete Guide