The next morning after another great breakfast, we piled back into the car and headed back out to the Speyside Region to Glenlivet Distillery. The steady rain made it seems like an eternity to get there. It was Mick’s day to drive and about 1 mile from the distillery he hits a curb and blows out the tire. We pull up and here he is in the pouring rain changing a flat tire on a narrow winding road. I was sure glad I wasn’t driving that day. Driving up the main road to the distillery you can see that this distillery was built for volume. Glenlivet is considered the biggest selling malt whiskey in the United States and is also considered the oldest legal distillery dating back to 1824 founded by George Smith. Glenlivet was the most modern looking distillery that we visited. Glenlivet is your “typical” tourist distillery and it shows. Not only do they have the most up to date machinery but their gift shop is second to none. We joined a group of tourists for our tour and headed out. It was impressive to see the size of their warehouse that was filled with barrels upon barrels of whiskey maturing in both Sherry and Bourbon barrels. While looking at some of the barrels I noticed that some were marked with their competitors’ names. When I asked the tour guide he said the great thing about being in the whiskey business is that all the distilleries work together and house barrels for other distilleries. He said you never place all your eggs in one basket. By sharing warehouses you lessen the chances of losing all your inventory if there was a fire or catastrophic event. That’s something you don’t see in the wine world but it makes a lot of sense. We then finally made it to the tasting area. Here we were able to taste the Glenlivet 12yr, Glenlivet 18yr, as well as the Glenlivet Nadurra (natural). While not my favorite of the trip so far, they still possessed great qualities of truly unique Speyside Whiskies. We were then taken up to their library where we were able to sample Glenlivet Founders Reserve which was a special bottling to celebrate their expansion 2 yrs ago. After lunch we jumped back into the car and headed to our next and final destination of the day.
Strathisla Distillery was our next destination of the day. Located in the Highlands this distillery is the oldest distillery of the Highlands in continuous operation dating back to 1789. Now owned by the Chivas Brothers this distillery has not changed much since it was built. They suffered a dust explosion in the late 1800’s but quickly rebuilt. Because of money constraints the distillery was built very tight and the ceilings made lower. There were a few places where I actually had to duck. Here I learned that the part of the alcohol that is used in making whiskey is the “middle run” which contains the best levels of pure alcohol. The “head” and Tail” are reused and made into the “middle run” in the next batch. Through tests you can determine which is the best pure alcohol to keep for making whiskey.
We then were able to sit down and taste 3 different whiskies. Two of them were blends while the other was a single malt whiskey. Blindly I was able to pick the single malt which was surprising to me. We tasted Strathisla 12yr, Chivas 12yr, as well as Chivas 18yr. Strathisla was quite tasty with its fruity and rich flavors. As a special treat we were taken down to the barrel room where behind a locked room you can see 3 barrels that were specially selected for the Royal Family to drink. Having been aged for decades they unfortunately could not give us a taste. We thanked our guide and started once again the long journey back to the city.
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