TRAVEL TALK


A dram of Chocolate Malt New Make spirit from the artisanal Holyrood Distillery in Edinburgh


World whisky destinations


USA Last year, more than two million people explored the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which includes 18 historic distilleries.


JAPAN Surrounded by nature at the base of Mount Tennozan, between Osaka and Kyoto, the Suntory Yamazaki Distillery includes a sprawling whisky library and the obligatory tasting session to round things off.


include pomegranate, douglas fir and ancho chilli. “Rather than just talking


about the production of whisky, we wanted to introduce a new generation and really bring that whole experience to life about the craft and the people in the place that it’s made,” says Barbara Smith, a veteran of the zoo industry who’s now a managing director at Diageo, where she’s responsible for its visitor experiences. Smith says 56% of visitors to Princes Street are new to Scotch whisky. In January, Diageo credited a sales boost in 2022 to the success of the new attraction, with a 25% increase for Johnnie Walker alone. The spirits giant has growing


competition. On the other side of Edinburgh Castle, The Scotch Whisky Experience announced in February that it was spending £3m to revamp a visitor attraction that first opened on the Royal Mile in 1988 with investment from 19 whisky companies. Not far away, the Holyrood Distillery, which opened in 2019, is part of a new wave of independent, artisanal distilleries run by bearded 30-somethings who wouldn’t look out of place running a craft brewery under a railway arch. It too has several visitor experiences, including a paired


tasting of whiskies and beers from Edinburgh’s craft breweries. In June, it’s hosting The Mash Up, an annual festival centred on whisky, gin, beer and food. “I think the traditional whisky


approach — of whisky being drunk in a particular way by a particular drinker, and gender, is definitely changing,” says George McNeil, chairperson of the Spirit of Speyside festival, an annual event hosted in dozens of venues across Scotland’s biggest whisky- producing region. “We’re seeing a much younger audience engage, and a more female audience, which is fantastic.” McNeil says this year’s festival, which took place in late April, was the biggest to date, with around 3,000 tickets sold in record time to whisky pilgrims from 35 countries. Numbers are also up at Diageo’s


dozen-or-so distillery visitor centres, including Lagavulin, on the Hebridean Isle of Islay, and Clynelish, which handily sits on the popular North Coast 500, a scenic loop of rural Scotland that starts and ends in Inverness. Across Scotland, demand for self-guided distillery tours has emerged as a trend. In 2016, the Malt Whisky Trail relaunched its website with new funding as part of a collaboration with nine destinations in Speyside,


including Glenfiddich. It now contains recommendations for hotels and restaurants along the way. A Hebridean Whisky Trail was launched in 2018, connecting old favourites such as Talisker, as well as Scotch upstarts such as the Torabhaig distillery, which opened on Skye in 2017.


Premium product The whisky sector is doing so well that ‘ghost’ distilleries, which shut in the 1980s due to a slump in demand caused by inefficiencies and overproduction, are being brought back from the dead. They include Brora, which reopened in 2021 and has an appointment-only visitor attraction and — later this year — Port Ellen. A lot of the movement in


whisky tourism is happening at the premium end of the market, as distilleries such as The Glenturret increasingly reposition themselves as a luxury brands. Blair Bowman has become the go-to broker for the ultra-rich who want to build trips to Scotland around quests for often-elusive casks. “They typically fly in by private jet and we’ll have cars or a helicopter picking them up and taking them to a distillery for a private tour,” he says.


CANADA A relative newcomer to the whisky world, having begun in 1989, the Glenora Distillery, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, is renowned for its award-winning single malts.


NORTHERN IRELAND The Bushmills distillery, near the Giant’s Causeway, boasts an impressive heritage, tracing its roots to a licence to distil granted in 1608. There are two tours available.


TASMANIA Distilling alcohol was prohibited in Tasmania until 1992, when Bill Lark, an enterprising whisky maker, challenged the ban. Multiple distilleries have since started up on the island, and in 2014 a tipple from Sullivans Cove was named World’s Best Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards.


JUNE 2023


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IMAGE: MANON METAYER


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