Paula graciously agreed to finish a few extra "wee" drams for those of us who couldn't.
Scotch Whisky accounts for around 20% of all food and drink exports in the U.K. (39 bottles are shipped abroad every second, according to the Scotch Whiskey Association). Therefore, a distillery tour seemed like a necessary stop on our trip.
We toured Deanston Malt, which had the dual benefit of having both an interesting history and being used for filming Outlander.
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| Houses constructed for Deanston mill workers. |
Deanston opened as a cotton mill in 1785, building a small town alongside the factory for its workers. It was ahead of its time in terms of innovation, installing the first gas lights in Scotland in 1813 and damming the River Teith to power the machinery (and now the distillery). Today, Deanston is the only distillery in Scotland that is self-sufficient in electricity. It actually sells 75% of the electricity it produces to the national grid.
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| Heading into the distillery's main building. |
In its prime, the Deanston mill employed more than 1,000 (men, women and children older than 9). It was the ultimate company town - there were only three stores (all company owned) and issued its own money (due to a shortage of coinage). The company didn’t allow a bar to open in town for fear it would corrupt the workers. So they'd probably be appalled to learn what the factory houses today.
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| This is the original barley sorter purchased in the 1960s. The company that made it went out of business several years ago (no one ever needed a replacement, apparently). |
When demand for cotton in Europe declined in the 20th century, the mill shut down in the 1960s. It reopened as a distillery a few years later in 1966. Today it employs about 13 people full-time in whisky making.
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| You can see the ghost of the Jim Beam stamp above 2018. This cask is ready to fill. |
Like many distilleries, Deanston recycles bourbon barrels to store its whisky (FYI: Never an 'e' in the Scotch version). Deanston prefers to use Buffalo Trace and Jim Beam barrels for flavoring purposes, and each barrel can be used up to four times. The lids are painted to indicate whether its maturing its first, second, or third batch.
This storage room was actually used as a stand-in for a wine warehouse in Paris in Outlander.
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| Storage warehouse No. 2. According to our tour guide, this one was used in Outlander filming. |
Like any good distillery tour, this one included a tasting at the end. Here are the three we tried:
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| Alyse liked the whisky enough that she took a bottle home. |
I will confess that I don't think I am meant to be a whisky drinker. I added enough water to mine to make it palatable to me, but Alyse declared it undrinkable. (If pressed, I preferred the third - it did taste a little like Great Lakes Christmas Ale. At least it did after the burning stopped.)
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| Brooke and I were trying to see how many water drops made whisky palatable. Our answer was "too many to count." |
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