Now this was the most amazing distillery tour we've been on - second only to the one at Ardbeg a couple years ago. (And that ranks first in my mind because the young man giving the tour was extremely passionate about whisky and its history on the Isle of Islay.)
The Balvenie Distillery Tour is not to be passed up. Not only do you get a great guide, but you get to see a complete maltings floor in action. The work is still pretty labor-intensive and back-breaking. But you really can see the difference in the new grains and ones that have already been on the floor to germinate for a few days.
They also have a working cooperage on site where they reconstruct the casks used to age the whisky in. A huge percentage of them are casks made of American white oak used one time for bourbon. Others are port or sherry casks primarily used for finishing the whisky in for the last few months before bottling. Even though these coopers have modern machinery to assist them, it's still another labor intensive job.
Actually quite a lot of what goes on in a distillery is not unlike how it was 100 years ago. Apparently they used to give the men a dram of whisky at the start of their shift and one at the end of their shift. And if a job was particularly offensive or hard (ie: cleaning out the mash tuns) then they'd get another dram. Our tour guide seemed very sad when he told us that things haven't been done like that since the 80s. He's been in the business for 40 years and is playing tour guide as his retirement job.
When we went to Warehouse no24 to see some of the casks being stored there were three casks set aside. It seems that we had an opportunity to fill our own little bottle with cask-strength whisky. I told Steve that he couldn't pass that up. He got to drop the dog into the sherry butt cask and then fill up this little bottle from a funnel. All made of copper by the distillery coppersmith.
The tour ended with an extensive Balvenie whisky tasting (from the new make to a very expensive 30yr) in the old manager's office. We had the very pleasant company of an American couple from Atlanta, Georgia and an older couple from Sweden with their young college-aged son as interpreter. So if you're at all interested in how whisky's made then I highly recommend that you book this tour. It's pricey compared to all the other distillery tours, but this is by far the best experience and well worth the expense.
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