Dalmore Distillery

From the road you see the black warehouses, looking a bit dead and not really attractive. But at the next crossing there was a sign to the "visitor centre", and we followed it.
Oh! What a surprise. The distillery looked so pretty, so neat, so cosy, once we arrived at the empty car park. It was Sunday, we were too early, but returned some hours later. It was definitively worth the extra miles. Visiting Dalmore is strongly recommended!
We experienced the often-cited "warm welcome" everywhere in Scotland, from the ferry, through the hotels, Bed&Breakfasts, Historic-Scotland-personnel, tourist-centre-personnel, people in general, right through the various distilleries, but here in Dalmore it was the warmest welcome ever.
When I returned three days later to take a photograph with my large format camera the secretary even helped me convince the electrician to remove his car from the area I wanted to record. Extremely kind, friendly, helpful.
It is a pity that I later at Strathisla made a fatal mistake, inserting the film holder in the wrong way into the camera, which ruined the Strathisla photo as well as one of the two Dalmore photos, without me knowing, so two of my invaluable photographs of this journey are lost forever... my fault.

Like many tours the Dalmore guided tour began with a video presentation. I regret that I did not buy the movie on DVD as offered in their shop. The senior chief of Dalmore explained his favorite way of whisky enjoying in a unique way, impressive! Especially his remarks about combination of whisky with coffee, chocolate, and cigars were quite enlightning. We bought a 12 years old Dalmore and a special "cigar malt" release and in the meantime have tested to taste it in combination with a cigar... interesting at least.
The tour itself then was the most intimate and personal one we had. The very young and very nice lady made the tour just for the four of us. She had a funny dialect but we got used to it soon and had much fun with her. An unforgettable experience! And additionally, this was the tour where we had the opportunity to nose and taste all intermediate products of the process: the barley, the malt, the grist, wort, the wash - and then - even the spirit! She served us the spirit directly into our palms. We sipped it out of our hands and she said the rest would be a good skin lotion... Our hands smelled so well until late in the night, washing did not remove it... good.

Dalmore distillery

Dalmore distillery

Dalmore pagodas

at the mash tun

at the washbacks

from left: Thomas, Dani, Angelika, and our nice guide...