Loch Lomond Distillery Tour

Loch Lomond is a beautiful place, full of proper Scottish vistas and charm. I have stayed near by before and passed by many, many times on the way to Scottish holidays as a child, but I have never once noticed the distillery. This is even odder when you consider that it is a huge, industrial behemoth that produces 10 million litres of grain whisky and 2.5 million litres of single malt every year!

Since the mid eighties the distillery has produced whisky in large volume, but in 2014 the distillery was bought out by its management team backed by a private equity firm. From this date to today, there has been a significant shift in focus and much more effort has gone into getting people to see the high quality and diverse range of whisky that the distillery has to offer.

Now let us say upfront that it might never win any awards for being beautiful, but it is a fascinating place to visit. They do not normally have the facilities to run tours, but we were lucky enough to tour with both Gary Mills (Brand Ambassador fo Loch Lomond Group) and Michael Henry (Master Blender)

Click on the photos to see them enlarged and read more about them, then click anywhere on the page to carry on.

The view on arrival, looking over to the huge industrial grain distillery.

The distillery is split into two parts, the grain distillery and this half, the malt whisky distillery.

As with most Scotch distilleries, their grain is milled through a piece of Industrial history from Yorkshire – a Porteus Mill. The rumour is that these were produced with such quality, that eventually the business was forced to close due to lack of new customers.

Here is the Mash Tun, which completes 4 sets of six hour mashes each day. They use 9.5 tonnes of grist to produce 40-50,000 litres of Wort.

Here you can see the long line of metallic wash backs, where the wort is fermented with two varieties of wine yeast.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the distillery is the range of stills that they have at their disposal. Here you can see the straight neck pot still and traditional pot still. The continuous column stills is just to the left of the foreground of this image.

Due to the different still types at Loch Lomond, they are able to create a wide variety of New Make Spirit. We were lucky enough to try seven different types, some fruity and some smoky.

Loch Lomond is one of a few distilleries that have their own cooperage on site.

Here you can see a barrel, which has been broken down and re-formed being re-charred, ready for its next use.

The cooperage has many barrels coming in and out on a daily basis, the majority of which are used within the two parts of the distillery and then are stored on site in one of the many on site storage warehouses.

The tough part was tasting the many excellent whiskies that Loch Lomond have in their collection in the comfortable surroundings of their tasting room.

We got the chance to sample many of the fantastic range of Loch Lomond whiskies, including this little piece of history (Loch Lomond Distillery was originally built on the site of the Littlemill distillery) It was a treat to taste and it was fascinating just how much of the present distilleries house style it shared!

Distillery Review

Loch Lomond is genuinely a distillery like no other that I have visited. It might stray from the quaint, picturesque view of distillation in Scotland that most people like to imagine, but what it lacks in looks it fully makes up for in sheer scale and variation. With the different still types and by cutting at different ABV levels, Loch Lomond can distill a baffling array of new make spirit, which makes their ability to experiment almost unparalleled.

Gary and Michael were fantastic tour guides! As Michael understands the distillation process down to the minute details of chemical composition, he was able to take us through the Loch Lomond process, highlighting all the interesting things that make whisky production at Loch Lomond unique and we were able to ask lots of geeky questions about different parts of the process and get answers with such detail that we often got lost. Gary is a fantastic advocate for Loch Lomond’s portfolio, he is passionate, knowledgeable, but still very much down to earth, so he added charm and a sense of fun to the process.

I think for us, however the most fascinating part of the process was getting chance to sample the different New Make spirits that they produce. Each carried the house style, which is sweet, full of tropical fruit flavours and creamy vanillins, yet each was made different by tweaks to the process. Whether it was peating and distillation in the flat line arm still, or using a high ABV cut point to create a lighter, crisper fruitier style, each variation gave the spirit an interesting spin on the house style.

We did also visit the warehousing and get chance to see some of the myriad of barrels that are on site, but sadly (as with most distilleries) photography was most definitely off the cards, which means that if you want the full story, you will have to visit for yourselves!

For making us feel like kids entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and for putting up with all our daft questions, we would give this distillery tour 10/10