Distillery Day

So I there's no way I was coming to Scotland without visiting at least one whisky distillery. Unfortunately all my favorites (Highland Park, Aberlour, Laphroaig, Macallan, etc) are either way up north, way out in the islands, or both. Fortunately, there are some great distilleries in the south as well, and a company called Rabbie's runs a tour that visits two of them (among a couple dozen other tours, I'm taking two others with them while I here).

The day of the tour (Monday the 18th) I headed down to Rabbie's cafe north of Waverley station, and

'The Kelpies.' We passed them on the way out of Edinburgh.

grabbed some shortbread to munch while we waited to board. While waiting, I eavesdropped on one of my fellow tourees while he packed his wife and son (who had no interest in whisky) off on a Harry Potter themed tour they also ran. Once everybody was onboard, we met our tour guides (Mike, a salty old Scot, and Francesca, a German girl who moved here to be with her Scottish boyfriend) and heaved ho.

After wending our way through the countryside, we drove through Stirling, where we saw Stirling Castle and the William Wallace monument off in the distance (and about 4000 sheep not so off in the distance). While Francesca drove, Mike gave us a running commentary on the history of Scotland, mainly focusing on Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. A lot of the material had been covered already, but it was good to get another take on it all (though since every tour I've been on runs through this material, I'm thinking it's going to get old by them time I finish my tours the next couple of days :P).

Sheep. Two of twenty thousand. Lots had lambs alongside them, but I couldn't get a good shot of any.

First stop of the day was at Glengoyne, which is north of Glasgow and just barely in the Highlands. Literally. The road between the distillery and warehouses is actually the dividing line between the Highland and Lowland regions. If their stills were about a hundred yards further south, they'd be classified as a Lowland whisky. They showed us a video on the history of the distillery (which was utterly forgettable except for the warehouse master, who's dialect was so thick they had to give him subtitles), then took us for a walk around the property. My favorite part of the day was how the smells changed as we walked around. The barley mill smelled like hay, the mash room (where they soak the barley grits) smelled like oatmeal, the wort room (where the beer ferments) smelled like Belgian beer and banana bread, the still house smelled like bananas, and the cask warehouse smelled like musty wood.

Two of their three stills.

It was also funny to see how much of whisky production is based around avoiding the tax man. The 'Glen' in so many scotch producers' names (Glengoyne, Glenlivet, Glenfiddich) is Scots for 'valley.' Back in the good ol' days, folks would set up their stills on the ridges of valleys so they could see tax collectors coming, and have time to pack up and leave. This kept going up until the early 1800s, when the King George IV visited Scotland and asked for a glass of Glenlivet, his favorite whisky. Apparently the king was unaware that Glenlivet was still an illegal operation at that point, and Parliament decided to loosen taxes a bit to encourage more distilleries to legitimize themselves to prevent similar embarrassments. Ian, the guide from the Scotch Whisky Experience, said that if a distillery says it was established in the 1820s or 1830s, it's utter crap. They were probably producing whisky for decades before that, just all under the table. There's also a 'spirit safe' in every distillery, which controls access to the new made alcohol until it's in the barrel, to prevent the workers from siphoning some off tax-free. Only the distillery manager and local tax office have a key to the safe, and the whole thing is made of high-polish brass, so would-be-tamperers leave easily spotted fingerprints. It didn't stop the folks at Glengoyne in the old days though; they'd just post a lookout, fill bottles from the casks, and hide them in the empty casks on their way to the landfill.

On the way out I grabbed a special bottle you can only get at the distillery (The Teapot Dram, named after the copper teapot that the old master blender would carry around and pour workers drams from during the day). Next stop was lunch in the town of Balmaha, on the coast of Loch Lomonde (pronounced Low-mund). We ate at a pub called the Oak Tree Inn, which had an actual log fire roaring in the corner. I joined two fellow tourees, who were South Africans by way of San Diego. The husband worked as a hardware engineer there for a few years, but visa issues forced him out of the states. We chatted a bit while I munched away on fish and chips and black pudding. After lunch, Mike and Francesca led a brief hike up to a viewpoint overlooking the Loch. It wasn't a hard hike, but the rain and wind certainly made it a chilly one.

Pretty scenery though.

Next stop was Deanston distillery in Doune, a TINY town near Stirling. The tour was much the same as Glengoyne's was, but they let us take photos inside the distillery which I enjoyed. Apparently since it's an industrial environment with "fumes and fine particulate matter" in the air, electronics aren't supposed to be used, but it seems that distilleries take that with varying grains of salt. The tour guide also walked us through the barrel warehouse, which used to be a weaving room in the 1800s (the facility went from being a textile plant to a distillery around 1920). The ceilings were huge vaulted stone numbers that funneled condensation down to the corners of the room (gross to think, but a poorly ventilated warehouse full of sweaty people has a lot of moisture floating about, and it used to drip down and ruin the cloth they were weaving).

The mash tun at Deanston, churning away on a batch of barley water.

Back on the bus to Edinburgh, Mike ran us through the story of Mary Queen of Scots, a much different version than the one the English tell. Funny how a different take on the same facts can change a story a great deal. We made one last stop at the Three Bridges area (which has three different bridges from three different centuries crossing the bay north of Edinburgh), then got dropped back where we started, north of Waverley. I dropped my stuff at the hostel, then went for dinner at The Grain Store, a slightly posh restaurant in Grassmarket. I scarfed down some venison and creme brulee, then headed back to the hostel to crash.

The oldest of the three bridges.