Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sometimes all you see is a brown tourist information sign, pointing the way, and some-
times there's just a very discreet sign by the roadside, for trade visitors and contractors, if
a distillery is not set up to accommodate tourists. A lot are, though, and personally I find
them very civilised places to be.
There is now a kind of Visitor Centre Vernacular, a recognisable, getting-on-for
industry-wide style of layout and furnishing that might seem twee if you're one of these
minimalist people who like their houses to look like operating theatres, but which kind of
suits the nature of the process that goes to make whisky, and which is anyway changing
gradually.
There will probably be lots of wood and sometimes quite a lot of exposed stonework,
there will be a darkened area where you can sit or stand and watch a visual presentation
which will tend to major on sparkling streams gurgling across moody moors and over
bulbous boulders, swaying sunlit fields of barley, gleaming great stills, old buildings
wreathed in steam and atmospherically lit barrels in dark warehouses. Often there will be
an example of an old illicit still, sitting glistening in a coppery sort of way in a corner,
usually in a mocked-up bothy setting. Frequently there will be lots of old distillery tools,
from when each concern was more self-contained than today: adzes, malt shovels, rum-
magers and the rest.
Almost always there will be impressively massive old ledgers and enormous leather-
bound books that are the genuine articles from a hundred years ago, detailing aspects of
the distillery's processes and general book-keeping. In the bit where you do the tasting
there will definitely be lots of wood, various seats, benches and tables - almost always in
wood - and sometimes there will be couches and chairs, usually in leather.
These are intensely comfortable places to be. Ideally you want to be able to sample
the product as well, to have a decent taste or two and not have to worry about driving,
but even if you're unable to indulge there are few more pleasant public spaces. For all
the slightly formulaic feel of a standard Visitor Centre - and this may well be something
that you'll only recognise if, like me, you're doing them by the dozen - there is a sort of
honesty about them, just because they are so close to the production process itself.
They are in the end anyway all different, just as the malts themselves are all different.
The people who staff them add an extra flavour to the mix as well: the awkward but
knowledgeable ones who you can tell really just want to be back doing the technical stuff,
opening valves, sniffing the air outside the spirit safe, waiting for the time to take the best
cut of the spirit, but who can answer any production question you ask them; the totally
enthusiastic types who really want you to know what a great thing they do here and how
wonderful their particular whisky is; the usually slightly diffident manager or even owner
who's unsure quite how to modulate their enthusiasm and how much depth of knowledge
to go into; and the slightly wacko characters who at their best keep you wide-eyed and
