Edradour Distillery and Whisky Trails

Posted on August 19, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Edradour Distillery is known as Scotland’s smallest whisky distillery, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s not worth the visit. This place is the real deal and in my Scotland experience, Edradour gives the best whisky tour out of the few I visited. I say this because the master distillers know their whisky, will correct your misconceptions (if you have any), and go out of their way to please your taste buds. I enjoyed Edradour’s tour, but the real treat comes afterward.

Contrary to what you might read on Trip Advisor or the other travel review sites, their tasting room cost (cash bar) is disclosed up front before your tour tickets are purchased and it’s made crystal clear that additional whisky can be purchased for a modest fee after the tour. Some people complain that it’s not free anymore… well, I will happily fork over a few pounds for a dram (or three) from a fine selection of whisky that can’t be found anywhere else.

Not only does Edradour have a fantastic whisky selection, this distillery is the only one I visited in Scotland that allowed us to sample “The Angel’s Share,” which is defined as the percentage of evaporated whisky in the air during the casking period that’s been left for the angels to enjoy.

“The Angel’s Share” in the warehouse is enough to get you wobbly!

Whisky Trails

We opted to take the “whisky walk” to the Edradour Distillery. Unfortunately, we had to skip Blair Athol’s tour because tickets were sold out. Rick Steve’s “whisky walk” suggestion to hit these back-to-back left us hanging. So, in order to avoid the wasted trip to Edradour, we called ahead to make sure there were openings.

We’re good to go. The “Edradour Walk” was underway… wait, where are the trail markings? Yeah… it took a little while to get the hang of things, but we finally found our way to the Black Spout, which is a medium sized waterfall on the way to the distillery.

The trail markings were great up to the point “Edradour Walk” disappeared. We were faced to make a choice at a fork in the trail with different, but similar colored arrows; if I remember correctly, there was a yellow arrow with a white circle and a green arrow with a clear circle.

We made the wrong decision and instead of getting to the distillery, we trudged through really high grass that had not been cut in months. We were also in the middle of a midge gathering. Don’t breathe… carbon dioxide only attracts more of these annoying bugs. No, must… stop. Whisky Trails is born.

*** For those of you interested, I found the “distillery,” which was actually hidden in a neighbor’s basement. No, that’s not true, but I did think I found it and proceeded to ask the gentleman out front gardening if I had finally made it to Edradour. He smiled, then led me through his private entryway to an unmarked road pointing in the direction to go. ***

Edradour Distillery and Whisky Trails

Whisky Trails

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