At the start of the Glengoyne Distillery tour a short video is played about the distillery. “Glengoyne Distillery looks exactly the way you’d imagine a distillery in Scotland to look,” the voiceover says. And it’s completely true. Touring Glengoyne Distillery in Glasgow was a beautiful, informative, and delicious experience.
Glengoyne Distillery is the only distillery that sits on the border between the Highland and Lowland whisky regions, so the whisky is actually distilled in the Highlands and matured across the street in the Lowlands. And because of its close proximity to Glasgow, it’s one of the most visited distilleries in Scotland. But even though it’s near the city, it feels like it’s a world away.
Touring Glengoyne Distillery in Glasgow
Getting to Glengoyne Distillery from Glasgow
The bus goes straight to Glengoyne but because it didn’t run early enough on Sunday morning for me to make my scheduled tour, I took an Uber. Within minutes the cityscape of Glasgow transformed into a tranquil, green landscape of farms, forests, and — finally — mountains. The half hour drive winds on a tiny road past farms of cows and sheep, and through forests with carpets of purple flowers. It is one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever been on.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the forest breaks and a valley appears. (“Glen” means valley in Gaelic.) Tucked next to the mountain, standing out against dozens of shades of green, is a white building: Glengoyne Distillery. It’s been here since the 1820s and continuously distilling whisky ever since. (They received their legal distilling license in 1833, hence the year on the building.)
Back in the beginning, the distillery used water from the waterfall behind the building. Gazing at the petite waterfall shows just how humble the production of the distillery once was. Today they use the more reliable Glengoyne Burn for water, which flows nearby. But the waterfall remains a reminder of the past, and another element of the peacefulness at Glengoyne.
Touring Glengoyne Distillery
Glengoyne Distillery offers several types of tours depending on the amount of whisky included. Besides basic tours, there’s a masterclass tour or five-hour masterclass that include a blend-your-own-whisky from four single casks, plus a warehouse tour. The Warehouse No. 1 Tour includes a tour of the distillery and hand-filling a bottle of Glengoyne single cask after taste-testing two different whiskies. That’s the tour I took.
Once the barley kiln house, Warehouse No. 1 now showcases Glengoyne’s “finest casks.” (The pagoda roof is a dead giveaway of the building’s former use.) Inside, one side of the room displays different barrel sizes and the way wood types and maturation length affect whisky color. (It’s fascinating!) On the other side of the room, behind a locked iron gate, are dozens of casks patiently waiting for the perfect time to be enjoyed.
Warehouse No. 1 Tour at Glengoyne
The casks line the wall of Warehouse No. 1, surrounding two casks in the middle of the room. One is a bourbon barrel filled in 2004, the other a sherry puncheon filled in 2002. My guide Kirsten and the warehouse manager gave me a traditional “dipping dug” — a small metal tube-like cup hooked to a chain — and showed me how to dump it into the cask. I heard a little splash, brought it back out, and poured myself a little dram of whisky. Cue excitement freakout; repeat for next cask.
Retrieving my own samples of single cask straight from the barrel was much more exciting than it sounds. Similarly, deciding between the two whiskies was much more difficult than it sounds! The bourbon cask (56.7%, non-chill filtered) was creamy and bright; unlike any other bourbon cask single malt I’d had. The sherry puncheon (European oak Oloroso sherry, 68.6%, non-chill filtered) was rich and nutty; classic sherry single malt but in the best way.
Glengoyne ages 95% of their whisky in sherry, all from the Tevesa cooperage in Spain. The ex-bourbon is, of course, from Kentucky: second fill casks dried for two years. I compared my samples with Glengoyne’s 15, 18, and 21 year bottles, hoping to make the decision easier. But all it did is make me love those bottles! (That 21! Swoon.)
Hand-Filling a Bottle of Whisky
In the end, the bourbon cask won. So we returned to Warehouse No. 1, this time armed with a larger dipping dug, and I pulled 200ml of whisky straight from the cask and poured it into the bottle. Kirsten handwrote the specifications on a tag, wrapped it around the bottle’s neck, and boxed it for safe traveling.
Again, it’s hard to describe how incredible the experience of filling my own bottle straight from the cask was. But I was on an absolute high. (And likely a little buzzed from the whisky!)
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I caught the bus back to Glasgow, this time driving on larger streets that weren’t nearly as picturesque as the drive there, but happily with two bottles of Glengoyne in my bag. (I couldn’t resist buying the 18 year!) Touring Glengoyne Distillery was, without a doubt, the best part of my time in Glasgow and definitely worth taking a detour from my Ireland trip.
Related :: Touring Tullibardine Distillery from Edinburgh, Teeling Distillery from Dublin, and High West Distillery from Salt Lake City.
