Tips for Visiting a Whiskey Distillery

In destinations around the globe, from Scotland to Japan to Kentucky, whiskey tourism has become such a big business that most distilleries are now open to the public and offer at least a token tour of their facilities. However, not all distilleries were created equal, at least from a tourist's point of view, and your particular taste in whiskey might not prove the best guide as to which distilleries merit a visit. It might turn out that the maker of your favorite bottle of spirits is made in a drab, industrial distillery, and the tour of that distillery will prove just as uninteresting. By following a few key tips, you can steer away from whiskey factories and towards the tours that explore the tradition and romance of whiskey.

Skip Stainless Steel Distilleries
Distillation is the second major stage of whiskey-making, and stills are made out one of two materials: copper and stainless steel. Even a simple copper still is a thing of beauty, as all that copper endows even a very modern-looking piece of machinery, such as the copper pot stills at the Lagavulin Distillery in Scotland, with a special luster. Some copper stills even have flourishes like the "whiskey safe" at the Maker's Mark Distillery in Kentucky.

A stainless steel still looks like a much more ordinary machine. Moreover, a stainless steel still is the signature of a distillery producing whiskey on a very large scale. Such a distillery will therefore resemble a factory, and carry little of the historical flavor and romance of whiskey-making. Whiskey lovers should therefore avoid tours of distilleries based around a stainless steel still.

Visit When the Distillery is Mashing
"Mashing" is the first major stage in whiskey-making, where a recipe of grain is combined with yeast, poured into a vat and allowed to ferment and produce alcohol. The fixtures of this process are an important feature of any worthwhile distillery tour, such as the giant cypress fermentation vats common to Kentucky bourbon distilleries. Walking into the mashing chamber is an experience in and of itself, as the air is thick with sweet, alcoholic vapor. Scotch-making adds an entire extra pre-mashing process of malting barley and kilning over a peat fire to mashing.

This first stage is a must-see part of making whiskey, but distilleries are not always working with mash. If you have a choice of days or distilleries, make sure you visit a distillery actively engaged in mashing. Since few distilleries post a schedule of when mashing is taking place, this means calling ahead.

Tastings
It might seem like a given, but not every distillery offers a free tasting at the end. Other distilleries might offer free tastings, but not on Sundays (this is especially common in bible-thumping Kentucky). While not receiving a free tasting should not be a deal-breaker, it might be the last feature that enables you to decide where to visit between two or more distilleries.