Many a vodka touts the number of times it’s distilled as a mark of quality: the more distillations, the purer the spirit. But that’s because vodka is supposed to be neutral in flavor and character. Not so for whiskey. Instead, whiskey distillation is designed to retain the flavor compounds that taste good while attaining an appropriate alcohol level for barrel aging. Two rounds in a pot still achieves this.

So why do some distillers go for a third?

It’s not because triple-distilled whiskey is better

Like every other part of whiskey production, distilling thrice is a choice. It impacts the final flavor of the whiskey, sure, but it doesn’t somehow make it better. Just different.

It all comes down to the still itself, which is made of copper. In addition to heating easily and evenly, copper reacts with boiling alcohol to eliminate nasty sulfur compounds and emphasize pleasant fruity ones, called esters. The more copper contact, the more prominent those lovely esters in the whiskey will be. A third distillation increases this interaction, although there are ways to achieve the same thing by distilling just twice, too.

So when Jameson says it’s “three times distilled, twice as smooth” it’s just BS?

Not necessarily! With an extra round in a pot still, the alcohol level goes up, while the overall amount of congeners—aka flavor compounds—goes down. This often results in whiskey that’s perceived as lighter, softer, and smoother. Those qualities aren’t a given, though, as other factors—including base ingredients, the whiskey’s age, and the type of barrel used for maturation—also affect texture and mouthfeel.

Jameson’s claim obfuscates the facts as well. Jameson is a blend. While the pot still whiskey in the mix is triple-distilled, the grain whiskey comes from a column still—a completely different method of production that is, ironically, actually much more likely than triple pot distillation to yield light and smooth whiskey.

There’s a reason it started in Ireland . . .

Triple distillation arose in the 19^th century in Ireland, where many distillers were using unmalted barley for tax reasons. Since the raw grain doesn’t yield as much alcohol as its malted sibling, an additional distillation was necessary to bring it up to whiskey-appropriate levels. The resulting whiskey style, called single pot still, was incredibly flavorful—and not all that light, in body or texture.

. . . But it’s not exclusive to Ireland

Not every Irish whiskey is triple-distilled, and not every triple-distilled whiskey is Irish. You can find whiskies that go three times through the pot still in Scotland, the United States, Australia, India, and beyond. Style-wise, they range from single malt to bourbon to New World takes on single pot still. 

Fractional distillations fall somewhere in the middle

There’s no need to distill exactly two or three times, by the way. A handful of producers have developed complex production methods that average the number of distillations to somewhere between two and three.

This works because with pot stills, a “run”—the liquid passing through the still—can be split among different rounds of distillation. As the distiller cuts heads and tails, they might direct those portions to be either discarded or re-distilled on the next pass.

Mortlach is one well-known example of this; its web of runs averages out to 2.81 distillations. Mortlach also happens to be a stellar example of (nearly) triple-distilled whiskey that is the opposite of light and smooth. There’s a pretty solid explainer of the distillery’s process, and the whisky’s resulting character, here.

The best triple-distilled whiskies to try

Since Ireland originated triple distillation, start your exploration with traditional single pot still whiskey, like Redbreast and the Spots (Green is good, but Yellow is superb). Newer offerings, like those from Teeling and Drumshanbo, are also worth checking out. For a budget option, The Busker has both a triple-distilled single pot still and single malt. All the single malts from Bushmills are triple-distilled; the 16-year-old is particularly outstanding.

Moving over to Scotland, Auchentoshan and Glasgow Distillery both offer triple-distilled single malts, as do, occasionally, Benriach and Benromach. The newly revived Rosebank Distillery is triple distilling, as its predecessor did. Springbank Distillery makes the unpeated triple-distilled Hazelburn.

In the U.S., Woodford Reserve triple distills at its Versailles, Kentucky, home, though the final product also includes column-distilled bourbon made at Brown-Forman’s Louisville distillery. Craft distillers, including Talnua, Keeper’s Heart, and ASW are making triple-distilled whiskies in the Irish single pot still style.

And, as previously mentioned, there are triple-distilled whiskies from even further afield, such as Australia and New Zealand. A few years ago, India's Amrut Distillery released Triparva, its experiment with triple-distilled single malt.