Auchentoshan Distillery Visit

You'll find bottles of Auchentoshan in just about every supermarket, and you may have bought 1 or 2 when you started your whisky journey.

But at 40% it's unlikely you'd buy another, unless you visit the distillery!My wife and I made our regular November trip to Glasgow to visit the theatre (Hamilton was brilliant) and attend the late session of the Glasgow Whisky festival at Hampden Park. Unfortunately my wife had broken her ankle so our usual Saturday shopping trip was curtailed.

Luckily for me Sam @ReviewsWhisky and Mike @WhiskyRover were in town and they'd planned a visit to Auchentoshan and asked if I'd like to go along? To be honest I wasn't filled with enthusiasm but they managed to drag me along!

Rather than the 'standard tour' we'd opted for the Cask Exploration: Deconstructing Three Wood

Explore The Depth Of Flavour In Our Auchentoshan Three Wood

"A deep dive into one of our most iconic expressions, this experience guides you through the intricate process of developing our much loved Three Wood whisky.

Starting in the warehouse, we will talk you though our triple distillation process and our unique New Make Spirit.

You will learn the influences as we reveal the casks used to mature the whisky, followed by a tasting at the bar of key stages of maturation to show how we create the Three Wood.

This experience is perfect for those familiar with the whisky process, who want a real insight into the detail behind one of our most renowned expressions."

We were lead up to the distillery by our guide Helen.

Where a dram of the aforementioned 40% ABV Triple Wood was waiting...

Whilst we enjoyed the dram we walked around the warehouse with Helen giving us the history of the distillery and telling us about the casks we could see. It doesn't matter how many distilleries you've visited you always learn something new on these tours. For me it was that the 'hoops' on the end of the wine casks weren't decorative they were sacrificial softer wood for the insects found in the winery warehouses, stopping them eating the oak.

We did the usual bung hole sniffing!

before walking back to the visitor's centre and entering the Blender's Room.

Here we got to try the 3 constituent parts of the Triple Wood. The Triple Wood isn't a traditional marriage of 3 casks it's a 3 stage maturation process.

Stage 1 : the first bottle was a c6yo ex-bourbon at 59.3% ABV and to be honest it was yummy - I would have bought a bottle immediately if available,

Stage 2 : all of the ex-bourbon is then filled into Oloroso casks for around a year - we tried a sample at 58.9% ABV - not as good as Stage 1 but very nice!

Stage 3 : the Oloroso casks are emptied into PX casks for a further 1 year maturation - we tried a sample at 56.2% ABV - yummy!

We all agreed that we'd happily buy any of those bottles but unfortunately they aren't available.

Instead Auchentoshan dilute it down to 40% and sell it as the Triple Wood which we got to try again. Whilst you could just about detect some of the lovely flavours from the Stage 3 bottle the 40% and chill filtering had killed the poor dram.

To make up Helen allowed us to try a few other drams including this amazing 25yo!

What were in the jam pots you ask?

Well actually a very clever idea! The jars contained scrapings from the insides of the casks which the bottles had come from - allowing you to 'sniff'' the 'bung holes' of the samples you were trying. It worked really well and added to what was a fantastic experience!

A huge thanks to Mike & Sam for the invite and to Helen at the distillery for a brilliant tour!