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My Handcrafted Opinions on Whiskies, Distilleries and Other Related Stuff

Dalwhinnie, Inverness-shire, Scotland

OK whisky lovers, your starter for 10 points, name the distillery on the River Spey that is not considered a Speyside?  If you said Dalwhinnie then congratulations.  The photo and title of this entry may have been a clue huh?  Dalwhinnie is actually classified as a Highland distillery due to its location (much further upstream than the traditional speyside region).   Many distilleries use their tours to promote their USP (unique selling point, apologies for corporate marketing jargon) for example the tall stills of Glenmorangie, the 1608 distilling license in Bushmills, Towser the Cat at Glenturret and Dalwhinnie is no exception.  The USP at Dalwhinnie are their traditional worm tub condensers.  They claim they removed them once for more modern condensers but had to revert back to the traditional ones because the new make spirit changed.  I have expressed my skepticism around these types of statements before so I will leave it at that.  Interestingly, like other distilleries now, most of the Dalwhinnie stock is actually aged offsite.  All this aside, I like Dalwhinnie and enjoyed the tour and the tasting and left with a bottle of their excellent 15 year old Distiller's Edition.  If I had a complaint, it is a long way from anywhere so a coffee shop or something similar to pass the time while you wait to go on the tour wouldn't hurt.

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Teeling Distillery, Dublin, Ireland

Teeling Distillery, Dublin, Ireland

My first distillery visit of 2016 coincided with Teeling's first birthday, this new distillery (one of many springing up in Ireland)  had been open about 1 year and 2 days. The site is a short, damp, walk from Dublin city center and is very impressive and includes a fantastic little cafe, gift shop, extensive tasting bar and well run and efficient tour.  You definately get the sense that the whole distillery was designed as a Dublin city tourist attraction first and a distillery second.   With no maturation on site (due to old Dublin bylaws, following a fire in the past, all whisky is matured away from the distillery) the tour is quite short and content clearly targeted at the tourist rather than the whiskey fanatic.   Due to their young age all their current stocks and bottlings are from stock produced by the Teeling family when they owned and operated Cooley Distillery.

There are multiple options for tastings at end of tour ranging from the basic line to cocktails to the more expensive single malt tasting that I opted for.  At 30 Euros for tour and tasting I don't think I have ever paid more for a distillery tour, except when I signed up for the rather expensive Magnus Eunson tour at Highland park which was at $100+ depending on exchange rate, but to be fair it did include a 40 year Highland Park. Like most Irish whiskey the tour is smooth, approachable and easy to consume... and I enjoyed it but perhaps would leave some wanting a little more.

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