Teeling's casks are the show, and each one is priced over its room

Walk the range this week and there is no bargain in it. Every Teeling on the shelf sits over the bottles the model rates closest to it, from a little over to half again over. The Teeling shelf sits around $97, and the spread is not about age or quality so much as the cask each bottle was dressed in. That makes the range genuinely fun to taste through. It also makes it a range where the honest question is not which one is cheap, because none is, but which one asks the least for what it gives.

The through-line is the cask. The model reads a different wood influence on nearly every bottle: wine casks on the grain, a rum-and-tropical lean on the malt and the small batch, the aromatic pot-still tradition on the Single Pot Still. That restlessness is the point of the distillery, and it is also what you are paying for. A range this varied costs more to assemble, and more to buy, than a house that runs everything through the same wood, and Teeling has decided its drinkers will wear the difference.

The Small Batch is where most people meet the distillery, and it is the right place to start. At $86 it runs about 30% over the roughly $66 its neighbours cost. The rum-cask finish is the signature: sweet and creamy, rich with toffee, a clear note of tropical fruit and the rum sitting underneath it all. It is an easy, likeable whiskey and a good introduction to what Teeling does. Thirty per cent over its room is a real premium for an entry bottle, but the glass is generous enough that most drinkers will forgive it, and at eighty-six dollars the sting is small in absolute terms.

The Single Grain is the quiet surprise. At $88 it carries about 40% over the roughly $63 of its neighbours, the second-widest gap in the range, yet it is one of the more interesting pours Teeling makes. It is matured in red-wine casks, and it shows: soft and fruit-forward, berries and blackberry, a cabernet edge, apple underneath. Grain whiskey is often the cheap filler of a blend, and here it is anything but. The catch is the price. Forty per cent over the nearest things to it is a lot to ask for a style most drinkers still think of as the budget option, however well it is done.

The Single Pot Still is the flashiest bottle and, relative to its room, the dearest. At $97 it runs about 49% over the roughly $65 its ten nearest cost. Pot still is Ireland's own tradition, and Teeling's is a pretty, aromatic take on it: melon and grape, a floral, rose-like lift, then spice and cinnamon with an apple crispness. If you want to taste what makes Irish whiskey its own thing rather than a lighter Scotch, this is a lovely glass to do it in. At very nearly fifty per cent over its neighbours, though, you are paying a clear premium for the style and the story, not getting a steal on a classic.

Which leaves the Single Malt as, oddly, the sensible one. At $112 it is the most expensive bottle here in plain dollars, but it carries the smallest premium: about 27% over the roughly $88 its neighbours cost. It is soft and fruit-forward, leaning on a rum-and-tropical-cask character rather than the wine edge of the grain. The reason it looks reasonable is that its neighbourhood is dearer to begin with — single malts keep pricier company than grain or small-batch blends, so a hundred and twelve dollars does not stand as far above its room as the cheaper bottles do above theirs. If you judge a bottle by how far over its own company it sits, the malt is the least-stretched Teeling on the shelf.

Line the four up and the pattern is clear. The cheaper the style's usual company, the harder Teeling's version stretches over it. The Small Batch and the Grain, sitting among inexpensive blends and grains, show the widest gaps. The Single Malt, keeping dearer company, looks almost fair despite the top-line price. Nothing here is poor whiskey. What the range is really selling is breadth: four distinct cask stories under one Dublin label, each priced with confidence. You are paying for the variety and the address, and it helps to know that going in.

So, buying. If you want one Teeling that does not punish you for the privilege, the Single Malt at $112 is the pick: the smallest premium over its room and a soft, satisfying glass. For a first taste of the distillery without much outlay, the Small Batch at $86 is the friendly entry, premium and all. The Single Grain at $88 is for the curious drinker who wants to see what a wine-cask grain can do and will pay over the odds to find out. And the Single Pot Still at $97 is for anyone chasing the Irish pot-still style specifically, with eyes open that the style, here, carries the steepest markup over its neighbours in the range.

Pay for the cask you actually want. Just do it knowing that at Teeling every cask comes with a surcharge attached.