Hannah and the Whiskey and Castle Tour

Last weekend I went on a tour that was coordinated by AUSA (Aberdeen University Student Association), for Fresher's week. We headed out early Saturday morning on a bus full of mostly other international students it seemed. Maybe most of the Scottish Freshers have already seen plenty of castles and distilleries? I don't know. At any rate, the vast majority of people seemed to be from places outside of Scotland (and the UK in general).

I was curious to see whether they were planning on taking us to the castle or the distillery first, especially since we left at 9am. Whiskey before noon?

They did end up taking us to a distillery first, the Glenfiddich distillery. And somehow we ended up showing up an hour early (10:30 instead of 11:30). How that happened, I have no idea. Some real bad Google maps directions perhaps? At any rate we ended up having to kill an hour around the distillery, an hour in which I had the most delicious scone.

Yuuuummmmyyyy and the cute baby jelly jar

At any rate, the distillery was very pretty from the outside:

Glenfiddich Distillery

Me at the Distillery

The tour was interesting. Although it was really, really hot inside, and the smell, not my favorite. But I learned a lot about Whiskey. I learned that you can't call it Scotch Whiskey unless it has been aged for 12 years. They use (usually American) oak casks which have been reused from holding either sherry or bourbon. Also, at this distillery anyway, the tour guide held the opinion that a scotch that has been aged longer (18 years as opposed to 12 for instance), isn't necessarily better but rather it costs more because there is less of it and therefore it is harder to come by. There is a risk factor in aging a Scotch, as over time it evaporates and runs the risk of losing too much alcohol in relation to water. Also since it evaporates, there is just less of it when they finally open it after all that time. At the second distillery we went to, the tour guide very strongly believed that an older Scotch it better. So I think it must just be a matter of taste. Because they definitely do taste different (how much does it burn on the way down? How painfully does it poke your eyes with its sharp smell?)

Then it was time for the tasting. At this distillery we were given samples of all three ages that they produce, 12, 15, and 18. This is before we tried it:
 

From left to right: me, Allie, Brittany

The after picture (if there were one), would be a little more fish face, a little less happy face. Man, whiskey is definitely not my drink.

After we finished trying the samples, we weaved our way back to the bus and headed off to the castle portion of the tour. We went to Ballindalloch castle, which is quite modern and not exactly what I had pictured. The family still lives there, but they open it up for tours. It was pretty impressive, I wish we had gotten to spend more time there. They had beautiful gardens, which would have been fun to spend all afternoon in. But we went through the actual castle and then had a very quick lunch on the grass and headed back to the bus.

Ballindalloch Castle - we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.

Part of the gardens at Ballindalloch

We weren't sure where we were going next, as they didn't really tell us. But we pulled up at another distillery, much to most of our chagrin. Personally I was hoping for another castle.

This was the Glenlivet distillery. We went on the tour here too, it was curious to note the differences (because for the most part the tour was similar, as obviously whiskey is made in a similar way everywhere). But where Glenfiddich is proud to be "family-owned" and do all the processes on sight, themselves. Glenlivet has more of a company feel to it, and when it's cheaper to do certain things elsewhere, they do it. I really enjoyed the tour guide on this tour though, he was quite humorous. When we got to the Cask room he was telling us how with the older whiskeys you open the cask and a lot of it is missing, and he rhetorically asked why, and then answered his own rhetorical question with "alcoholic mice who sneak in with straws in the middle of the night." I appreciated that for the amusing image. A tiny mouse standing next to this big cask with a twisty straw. I imagine it would look something like this:

This is what happens to all the whiskey (as drawn by me)

My other favorite thing about the the Glenlivet distillery was finding this in the gift shop:

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers...cracks me up!

We got back to Aberdeen around 5:30 or 6 and prepared ourselves for our excursion the next day - to Stonehaven and Dunnotter Castle! And that's what is coming up next!