Travel: Train: Edinburgh to Carlisle (1hr 15min), Train: Carlise to Annan (20 mins). Walk from station to distillery (30mins)

My Itinerary:
06:52 – 08:06: Train – Edinburgh to Carlise (Avanti)
08:54 – 09:14: Train – Carlise to Annan (Scotrail)
09:30 – 10:15: Cup of Tea (The pantry)
10:15 – 10:45 Walk to Distllery
11:00 – 12:00: Classic Tour
12:45 – 13:45: Pint (Buck Inn)
14:13 – 14:39: Train – Annan to Carlise
15:02 – 16:18: Train – Carlise to Edinburgh

Directions: The train journey takes you to England where you connect on the way to Annan, the train to Carlise, on my route I had around a 40 minutes to wait for my connection.  The train to Annan is a limited stop train begins in Carlise on the way to Dumfries, with Annan being the second stop.  After you arrive in Annan it is then is quite straightforward walk although it does take a good half hour. Walk out the train station then head straight into the town along St Johns road, take a left onto Bank Street and then cross the road and head straight past William Hill and onwards past the Annan football stadium and you will soon start to smell the distillation process as you get closer to the distillery which is on your left hand side and well sign posted.

At the Distillery: The distillery is pretty compact, you access the building through a quite large carpark and there is then a small shop which doubles as the visitor centre where you check in or buy tickets for the tours.  There is also a large café area where you can get a bite to eat or a pre or post tour drink on the lefthand side, then between both of those area is the old mill where your tour begins.

My Tour (The Classic Tour)

I booked myself on the 11am tour and arrived slightly early on a cold January afternoon, I did check out the shop and they do have a good range of whisky available for purchase especially for such a young distillery.  I waited on my tour in the old mill room as it was warm in there and that is where my tour guide and group gathered and started the tour.  The tour starts with an early tasting, you are given a tasting class as a lanyard at the start of your tour and I got to sample the blended malt that is produced on site.  The malt was made in collaboration with James Cosmo who people might know from Game of Thrones and movies such as Braveheart. The whisky was very drinkable for a blend, quite smooth with only a little burn and very sweet but it did warm me up a bit on a cold day.

The tour starts off with a bit of history about the distillery, Annandale has had a distillery on this site for over 100 years and has had a few different owners since Geirge Donald originally bought it in 1830. It was for a short time part of the Johnnie Walker whisky group who helped modernise the distillery before being forced to close during World War One in 1914 and afterwards the lease on the distillery expired.  It was then taken over by the local former for a while who used the building for farming purposes but eventually fell into disrepair until it was purchased by the current owners Dr David Thompson and his wife Teresa Church.  They restored the distillery back to health and re-opened in 2014 and they have not looked back since, in fact the day I arrived Annandale had just released their first 10 year old single malt which is quite a milestone for a new distillery.

The tour the continued on th upper floor of the Mill room where you get to see the whisky production process and this incuded the mashtun, wooden washback’s and three copper stills. It is quite a condensed production in Annandale but everything is done manually and they have tried to keep the process authentic which is to be commended. The spirt has a twin distillation process which they say is to help smooth the spirt out and I have to say I probably agree after the later tasting.

For the next part of the tour, you head outside and to the filling room where the casks are filled (hence the name!), they fill around 50 casks during a day which gives you an indication of the size of production going on at the distillery. My guide also told a great story about Doddie Weir (late Scotland Rugby player) who was working in waste management and visited the distillery as part of his job, the owners were big rugby fans and after talking with they ended up getting him to fill one of the casks the distillery produced which he was then given bottles from to action off and raise money for his charity.

The Tasting

The final stop is the warehouse where the whisky casks are stored, and in the first floor is all independently owned casks as you can buy your own cask on site.  There are also some of the first casks filled at the distillery from 2014. The is the end point of the tour and so it is also where you get the remaining samples of the tour. Although it was cold inside the room I soon got warmed up after the samples. The four samples were all really good if I am honest, although they were all cask strength I have to say they were very drinkable and i did not feel the need to add water to any of the drams. The samples comprised two oak casks (peated and non-peated) and two oloroso sherry casks (peated and non-peated). The first dram was a perfect winter dram (especially as it was a cold Jan morning!). It had no burn and notes of cinnamon and vanilla (probably infleunced by the Bourbon barrels). Then next dram was the oloroso non-peated, again very good and as I love an sherry cask it was ideal for me, it was very smooth despite the young age and strength again very drinkable and this was probably my favourite dram. The next two were the peated versions of what i had just consumed and again they were very nice, as the peat content is not overpowering, even if you are not a peat fan I think you could still enjoy these.

Summary

Tour time: 1hr

Tasting: 5 Samples

Travel: Train from Inverness to Muir of Ord (30 mins) / Walk from Station to distillery (10 mins)

Directions: It was a short train ride from Inverness to Muir of Ord, then from the station it is only a short walk to the distillery. I went over the footbridge and then headed straight towards the road before taking a slight right and then it was a straight walk all the way to the distillery which was on the left.

At the Distillery

The visitor centre was refurbished in 2022 and it looks excellent with a large shop and café on site where you can enjoy a light snack or dram before or after the tour and pick up a bottle afterwards if you wish. There is a decent sized shop with a wide selection of Singleton drams and other Diageo drams, some of which I had not heard of before. There is also the option to bottle your own 11yr old cask strength Singleton if you wish.

My Tour (The Classic Tour)

The tour began in the visitor centre in a small alcove between the shop and café, I had chosen the standrad tour at 11:30 which lasts for just over an hour and gives you a tour of the production process and three drams afterwards. The Glen Ord Singleton is one of three malts in the Singleton range, the other two being located in Dufftown and Glendullan. According to my guide, each singleton expression targets a different international market with the Glen Ord focused on the Asian market, Dufftown on Europe and Glendullan on North America. The whiskies have different flavour profiles which are targeted at these individual markets, this also means that I can be difficult to buy some of the Singletons in the UK, as the Glen Ord for example is mostly exported to Asia.

The distillery has a high volume of whisky being produced each year with around 14 million bottles per year which might be surprising if you have never heard of the Glen Ord singleton.  The tour gives you a glimpse of the scale of production, one of the first rooms on the tour is where a 8 wooden washback’s which each hold around 56,000 litres of whisky gold. I had the chance to see the fermentation in action and you could see through the window the hot water being sprayed over the malt.

The next room was the Spirt stills and there were 6 which you could view, along with two spirt stills for the low wines and for the whisky.  These rooms offer a decent gauge of the production levels but there are other areas with more washback’s and stills which you don’t get too see. The penultimate stop is a traditional dunnage warehouse, although all of the whisky is not stored in this area as they are unable to expand to meet their production amounts so other sites in Leven and Striling hold the excess production. You do get to see the two main casks of American Oak and Sherry buts and have a smell of the casks, where you get a hit of the wonderful flavours which are developing inside.

The Tasting

The tasting is conducted in a tasting room which is close to where the tour starts in the visitors centre and you get to taste three whisky’s all of which are from the Singelton range.  This included a 12 year old Dufftown, 15yr old Glendullan and distillery exclusive Glen Ord.  My favourite dram was probably the Glen Ord, it had a strange almost transparent colour with hints of raisins and apples on the palate it was unusual and very drinkable. However as a side note I did get to try the Glen Ord 12 in the shop afterwards and it was outstanding, they are missing a trick not letting you try that on that tour.

Free Time: If you have some free time there not much in Muir of Ord, but you can get a coffee to cake at a café in town near the train stations or there is a decent size Coop where you can get snacks. However, another option is to stay at the café in Glen Ord as there are some light snacks and a good selection of whisky and it is a perfect area for chilling out for a while.