Whisky tour - Deanston Destillery

Whisky tour

A couple of years ago my father in law took my brother in law and me on a whisky tour through Scotland. We started our trip in Edinburgh, where we went to the whisky experience and had a nice dinner with haggis.
The next day our private chauffeur was waiting outside the hotel to take us to two distilleries, Deanston in Doune and Tullibardine in Blackfort, that day. Traveling only over small country roads to see as much of the scenery as possible and hear ass much great stories from our chauffeur. That night we stayed in a hotel situated in an old watermill in Perth, but first had a quick stop at the local pub for a nice pint to wash down all the whisky.
The next morning after a good Scottish breakfast it was back in the car to go to the The Glenturret Distillery (the famous grouse experience) in The Hosh. From there it was by country roads and more great stories from our chauffeur back to the airport. It was a great trip with nice sightseeing and a lot of great whisky tastings.
We will come back to Scotland for sure.

In this article I will zoom in on our tour at Deanston distillery in Doune, and in the process tell you more about the process of whisky making.

Deanston is situated in an old cotton mill, chosen for its location on the banks of the River Teith. Due to its location and the innovative thinking the distillery is completely self-sufficient in its power needs. It was a green plant long before it was an public issue. And off course the water is used for making the whisky.

This was the first fact our lovely guide provided us with.

Next ingredient to make whisky, malted barley. Meaning the barley is soaked then heated so they sprout, when they sprout the heat is slowly raised to stop the process and we have malted barley.

It’s a real lowtech business

The malted barley is then milled into grist.

The grist than goes into a mash tun where it is mixed with hot water, this is done to extract the sugar from the grist.

This sweet liquid is called wort witch will slowly drain trough the perforated copper floor for fermentation in the wash back. The sugar and yeast do their work and turn into alcohol, the product know is called wash. This process takes on average 100 hours.

As we continue the process line the wash is transferred to the wash stills and heated by large copper coils to encourage evaporation. The vapours rise up and condense, they move to the spirit stills for another round of distillation.

The new make as it is now called is transferred into the number one spirit vat where it is reduced with water from the river Teith to 63.5%. The new make is then transferred into wooden casks.

The casks are then stored for three years and one day to mature into Scots whisky.

Next stop on our tour, the tasting room where our lovely guide poured us some very nice Deanston single malt whisky’s with some more interesting backstories about the distillery and it surroundings.

To top off the visit we had a lovely lunch in the restaurant at the visit centre where we got a surprise glass of whisky from our guide in a glass we could keep.

If you are in the neighbourhood give Deanston a visit, if not for the tour then to grab a nice bottle of whisky.

Hope you enjoyed reading this piece, more will follow.

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