Edradour Distillery

We took the day off from golf today and drove up to Pitlochry, a beautiful town in the heart of Scotland that is a well travelled tourist destination in the summer. The drive was very nice as the leaves are starting to turn, so we got to see some amazing colors (or colours as they say in Scotland). There is a lot of great stuff to do in Pitlochry. They have some amazing sceenery, with many lochs, rivers and rugged hilltops. If you are into walking there are eight marked trails that are all very nice. There is a famous festival that runs six plays during the summer. It is also home to Blair Castle, one of the best known castles in Scotland, home to the Dukes and Earls of Atholl. It is also home to the Atholl Highlanders, the Duke’s private army, and the last private army in Scotland.




Pitlochry has three distilleries, Blair Atholl, Edradour (just outside of town), and Aberfeldy to the west. We took the tour of Edradour, the smallest distillery in Scotland. It is a great little place, where they still hand make scotch whiskey. There are only three people that actually make the whiskey and they use a lot of the old-fashioned equipment. Only 12 casks of whisky are produced a week, most of the big distilleries make that in a few hours. It is an amazingly simple process to make the whiskey, there are only three ingredients: barley, water and yeast. It is distilled twice and from beginning to end, the process only takes a week. Then the hard part, you have to wait at least three years for it to mature, and with many single malts 10 to 15 years. The tour is well worth your time and you also get a free taste. If you want to buy some, they have a nice store, at the end of the tour.