The Scotch Whisky Association lists over 70 distillery visitor centers in various corners of Scotland. Our whisky trips to the country are meant essentially as discovery vehicles for heretofore untried single malts. I’m happy to make a repeat visit here or there, but most of the target distilleries on a given itinerary are the ones not visited before. Which becomes harder and harder to set up in an efficient way. The regions of Islay, Speyside, and large swaths of the Highlands have been well covered on past exploits, and the scope for first-time visits gets smaller while the distances between targets become longer.
Also, age is now a factor. Not the whisky’s age, but the visitors’. We can’t really do justice to more than a couple of distilleries on a single day anymore, whereas in the past, we may have been able to visit four or five during the opening times on the same day.
So, 4 days = 8 distilleries. Or maybe 9, depending on how you count, as you will see below. Here is my customary brief overview.
Deanston was a return visit. We had fond recollections from stopping by in 2018; the distillery was along our driving route, and we did not want to start our trip with a 3-hour leg to the first target (which, sadly, eliminated Ben Nevis from the itinerary altogether). The factory-like complex sits on the bank of the River Teith, and I somehow retained an erroneous past impression that the tasting room windows looked out on the river. In fact, all you can see from the windows is the embankment wall (located immediately to the right of the below perspective). Nonetheless, the shop and the tasting area are great, the staff is engaging, and a large full-service café has opened on the premises since our last visit. That last time we ended up with an impromptu tasting of half a dozen selections from the Deanston range gratis, but nowadays the tasting flights cost as much as £35 for 4 drams (pretty steep but not unique); playing up our repeat-visitor credentials, we elicited a 5th at no extra cost.
Ardnamurchan is one of the youngest distilleries around, just a dozen years old, located on the eponymous peninsula on the southwestern edge of the Highlands region. Probably the prettiest by sight of all the distilleries that we visited on this trip. Despite its remote location, there were some other people there when we arrived. Friendly and easy-to-engage staff, nice tasting room, and a flight of 3 whiskies for £12.
Nc’nean is an even younger distillery, located quite a distance from anything on the Morvern peninsula (if you look at the map, you may think that it is next door to Ardnamurchan, but there is more than an hour and a half of driving distance between the two; we did not visit both on the same day). There is not much visitor traffic in the off-season, so advance arrangements are recommended; I emailed the distillery with the day and the approximate time of our arrival and obtained a confirmation that someone would be there to receive us. The same person who emailed me back met us in the bar and talked us through the distillery history and its expanding range as we proceeded with the tasting. It turned out to be a very good experience. The 3-dram flight cost just £6 and was further enhanced by a preceding drop of the new make spirit and then an extra dram towards the end as a reward for our enthusiastic engagement. (On a curious note, there is a baby-changing table in the restroom; apparently, Nc’nean is among the small number of distilleries that allow underage visitors and are happy to welcome parents with infants.)
Tobermory is located on the Isle of Mull. It is a sign of our dedication to scotch that we are willing to incorporate two ferry rides into the itinerary for the purpose of visiting a single distillery. (We stayed on the island overnight.) Tobermory village waterfront is very colorful – to be featured in the next post – and the distillery visitor center at the edge of it feels somewhat understated, sitting behind the large village parking lot. The distillery is one of the oldest in Scotland, dating from 1798, and produces single malts under two brand names, Tobermory and Ledaig, owing to the fact that today’s Tobermory is a merger of two villages, and the distillery is actually in what historically was the village of Ledaig. Here, we went for a semi-guided tasting of four “elevated” whiskies across both brands (for a fairly reasonable outlay of £35), in a separate tasting room off the main shop that we had to ourselves for the duration of the experience. The affable guide gave us a long intro, mentioned some things to look out for, and then left us to go through the tasting at our own pace while periodically checking in on us.
Glen Scotia is one of the three Campbeltown distilleries. The visitor center is compact, with a dedicated sit-down area for tasting. The attendant was happy to engage with all of our questions, but he was manning the shop all by himself and needed to periodically switch his attention from us to other people who popped in and out. All whiskies in the distillery range are available for tasting at different per-dram prices. We selected 4 for the total cost of £28, and then talked the attendant into giving us an extra dram of the one that we liked the best (for the record, that was the 12-year-old tawny port finish, the most outstanding scotch of this trip).
Springbank in Campbeltown was probably the most low-key of all our stops on this trip. The distillery has a bar on premises, called Washback Bar, where you can just walk in, sit down, and order a flight from among various options (we picked one at £30 for 4 drams). The atmosphere is nice, the engagement with the bar staff is limited, and that was what we needed at that moment. We did pop into the relatively simple visitor center a bit later and chatted up the staff; you can pour yourself a sample of each of the Springbank, Longrow, Hazelburn, and Kilkerran brands from huge glass containers by the shop window, but we had to pace ourselves.
Glengyle is the third Campbeltown distillery, existing, in a sense, solely so that Campbeltown can be considered its own whisky-producing region (three distilleries is the minimum for that). It is, to be honest, creative accounting. Glengyle is not territorially distinct from Springbank; in fact, if you take a few steps forward in the above perspective and turn right, you will see the sign shown below less than thirty meters in front of you. The Springbank visitor center doubles up as that of Glengyle’s as well (this is where the count of visited distilleries – either 8 or 9 – becomes open to interpretation). There is also the peculiarity of the “Glengyle” trademark not being owned by the distillery, so the single malt produced at Glengyle is branded as Kilkerran. We were staying in Campbeltown overnight – no additional driving that evening – and therefore went for a warehouse tasting of Kilkerran. It ended up being private, offering 6 straight-from-the-cask selections under excellent guidance. Top experience – and only slightly more expensive than flights elsewhere at £40.
The next destination on our original plan was another island, the Isle of Arran. It used to have a single distillery, interchangeably called Lochranza or Arran, but now has a second one, a sister establishment called Lagg, on the opposite side of the not-exactly-small island. Intraday ferry schedules are hard to align with distillery visits to start with; staying overnight on Arran was not in our plans, given that we were flying out of Edinburgh the following early morning. We initially thought of reaching the island in mid-morning, spending time at the older distillery, and departing towards the mainland in mid-afternoon. However, the weather was shifting, and with that, the ferry schedule shifted as well. I got an email from the CalMac ferry company the day before that the afternoon runs from Arran were being cancelled, and our latest option for the day would be departing a little over an hour after arriving. No amount of dedication to scotch justifies taking two ferry rides to spend at best 15 minutes on a distillery visit. We scrapped going to Arran altogether.
The alternative for the day presented itself even before we made that decision. Glen Scotia distillery belongs to the Loch Lomond Group, whose headline eponymous distillery is not open to the public; the shop attendant at Glen Scotia clued us in that there was a brand-new alternative place to find dedicated tastings of Loch Lomond whisky. Luss Distillery, in Luss village on the shores of Loch Lomond, produces gin rather than scotch, but it belongs to the same parent company and includes scotch tasting flights in its offerings. The visitor center opened literally just a few weeks before our visit. It has all the vibe of a large brand-merchandise store, spiced up by a case displaying a bunch of very mature, very expensive vintages. The tasting counter on one side is stocked with the entire range of Loch Lomond whiskies and Ben Lomond gins. We went for the entry-level 3-dram tasting for £15, and then talked the guide into giving us smaller portions of 3 more whiskies from Glen Scotia, confirming our outstanding impression of their 12-year tawny port finish. The distillery complex includes a full-service cafe and a dedicated modern gin tasting room, all in the middle of a rather touristy village. (It was raining and we did not explore much beyond the distillery.)
And that leaves Auchentoshan as the other repeat visit to bookend the trip. On our first stop here in 2018, I tried their Three Wood whisky, and it became my preferred go-to choice for several years afterwards. Then, a couple of years ago, I stopped liking it all that much – either the formula changed, or my tastes have. Part of the reason to stop by again was to see if I could rediscover my enjoyment of the Three Wood. The visitor center is comparatively low-key, fully stocked with the current range and offering a small seating area for tasting. We had a nice reception and engagement from the attendant, played up our return-visitor bona fides, elicited 4 drams in the officially 3-dram tasting flight (at £12), and then talked the guy into offering us a taste of the new Three Wood. It failed to reignite my interest in it, but the experience was pleasant.
With that, I am up to 50 unique distilleries visited over the course of five trips to Scotland. I have a feeling that this year was not the last such trip. We’ll tentatively target 2029 for another one.