On our Summer Holiday to Speyside we spontaneously decided to book a tour at Glenfiddich Distillery as we were passing by!
A Visit to Glenfiddich Distillery
We were renting a little AirBNB called The Falls Cottage close to Glenlivet Distillery on our getaway. During the trip we visited The Glenallachie Distillery, Aberlour Distillery and The Speyside Cooperage but we also found time to climb Benrinnes. After the tiring hike we drove around and found ourselves driving through Dufftown and stopped by Glenfiddich just to check it out. Felt like a shame to be near this distillery that has become one of the best selling scotch single malts and missing it. Luckily enough they were running tours and for a mere £10pp we got shown around the distillery.
Follow the link for money off your first booking with AirBnb here.
The Glenfiddich Distillery Tour
The tour started with being greeted by our guide, and it turned out our group would be the only ones in our group. Our guide was lovely, although seemed a bit nervous and firmly followed her script which made questions a bit tricky unfortunately, as she seemed reluctant to find out the things she didn’t know and the answers she did have seemed to have an interrupting effect on her script.
It was a lovely tour, and the distillery is very scenic. Several pagoda rooftops (as the one pictured above), lots of greenery, warehouses and of course just look at all those stills!
I won’t give away all of the details for those who wish to visit the distillery and do their own tour!
The Glenfiddich Warehouses
Unfortunately no photos were allowed inside the warehouses but you do get to walk in and the guide will tell you about the maturation that they do for their whiskies and explain a bit more about the solera system that they use for Glenfiddich 15.
The warehouses felt quite commercialised for the tour, but always fun to see. And of course due to the massive production scale at Glenfiddich the whisky isn’t matured here.
Before the final part of the tour which is the tasting you also get to see their bottling hall where they also have a cupboard of some of their limited an special releases. There’s a lovely story about the Snow Phoenix which was released after the roof of one of the warehouses collapsed under the weight of heavy snow and the whisky they managed to save was bottled under this name.
This was probably the most fascinating part of the tour for us as it isn’t something you’ll see at most other distilleries.
The Whisky Tasting
Our tasting consisted of the 12yo, 15yo and 18yo. I really like he 12yo because of its fruitiness and I can definitely see why it sells so well. However the 18yo was probably my favorite since I felt that it is very elegant in its flavours. The 15yo is not really for me at the moment, but perhaps it will surprise me when I go back to it. Always interesting to rediscover whisky.
One thing to note is that if you are the designated driver you only get a miniature of the 12 year old, and not the other expressions unfortunately.
Conclusion
We had a good time at Glenfiddich and it was fascinating to see the distillery in real life as it is a scotch whisky of big importance on the market.
Have you been to Glenfiddich Distillery?
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