Cooley might be making a whiskey for Liverpool FC
Shot of Liverpool FC, anyone?
RUGBY IS more John Teeling’s sport than soccer but he’s not one to turn down a business opportunity, which is why his Cooley spirits company has pitched to provide Liverpool football club with an own-label whiskey.
Talks are said to be at an “early stage” with the debt-laden Merseyside club, which hasn’t won the English league title since 1990.
Cooley is no stranger to own- brand whiskey, producing a spirit for the University of Notre Dame in the past. It also provides products for a number of big supermarket groups, including Dunnes Stores, Tesco, France’s Carrefour and German discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Cooley was recently named as Distiller of the Year by John Hansell of Malt Advocate magazine, a leading voice on whiskey in the United States, where sales of Irish whiskey have exploded in recent years. It’s not clear what tipple Liverpool’s US owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, enjoy but, given the way Liverpool have performed this season, a shot or two of whiskey from the Cooley mountains might help numb the pain.