Good Crieff

[albo]

I'm taking a wee trip up to Criff next week and as part of that I'm planning to take in a distillery (or 2 but don't tell the wife).

Having spoken to Bifter about this, I think I'm going to be heading up to Aberfeldy to the Dewar's world of whisky.

But there are other options on the table, which are fairly easily reachable from Crieff.

The Glenturret Distillery is in Crieff it's self, though looking on the web it seems to be all about the famous grouse, and I don't really want to go round a glorified famous grouse experience.

The Tullibardine distillery is also fairly close at hand.

Any thoughts / suggestions?

[Keith]

I have never visited Glenturret as the Famous Grouse Experience puts me off also but it is probably an ok tour.

I enjoyed a visit to Tullibardine a couple of months ago, a whisky to watch for in the future as most of there stuff is young at the moment but still very drinkable and i think will improve a great deal within 4 or 5 years, a very knowledgeable tour guide. i also visited Deanston the same day although the young student summer worker (i assumed she was) was not very knowledgeable but i still enjoyed the visit as it hasnt been open long to visitors.

[William]

I would choose Tullibardine over the Famous Grouse and as Keith says they are a knowledgeable, also a enthusiastic and friendly bunch which always helps to make a good distillery visit and they do have some interesting young whiskies now.

One tip, the entrance and car park for the Tullibardine visitor centre is basically the same car park for the Baxters (who make the soup) factory shop which incidentally is worth a visit also not only for the Baxter products but it also has a decent stocked whisky shop.

I stopped off in the summer as i was in the area and came away with 3 bottles of whisky and a load of shortbread and soup and various other goodies from the Baxters factory shop.

Deanston to the south of Glenturret or Aberfeldy to the north would be another 2 options.
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There's no bad whisky. Just good whisky and better whisky.

[albo]

Thats great information, the more I can get the better.

Though no doubt the wife will roll her eyes when I suggest a day drip out to a distillery, the wee man is 19 months now, time he started to get an interest in the water of life.

[albo]

Well I went up to Crieff and while I was there ended up at the Aberfeldy distillery, unfortunately I didn't take in a tour as we had our 20 month old with us, I don't think he would have been for going round a distillery tour, maybe in a few years

While we were at the shop and the wee man was trying to pick up and throw everything he could get his hands on, I saw they did a self fill a bottle, type thing, directly from the cask. I did that, it was quite an experience for a whisky geek such as myself, I've written up a bit in the what is your latest purchase if you want to read about it.

All in all very enjoyable and worth while.

While we were up there, I managed to drag her (and the wee man) over to the Glenturret distillery, again no tour. But I was rather disappointed with this, as I expected it was all about the famous grouse experience, they didn't even have a bottle of Glenturret for sale in the shop, though they did have every bottle of grouse you could imagine and a few bottles of HP and Macallan.

The restaurant was shut for refurb so they have a pokey wee pop up cafe open which only sold a small selection of sandwiches and cake.

All in all not very impressed with that, the wife less so. Though the wee man enjoyed looking at the 60ft Grouse in the car park.