So… Had a lovely 3 nights in Oban, I’ll spare you the details as this is a whisky blog… Other than, yep, I did get to visit the distillery there, even though the sign on the door said it wasn’t open on Sunday we found that thankfully it was.

It was my first actual tour, so was hard to baseline as to it’s quality, although my opinion of the tour was really only that it was ‘ok’, nothing special. Tailored for tourists who are maybe only light whisky drinkers at best.

Disappointingly Diageo (Oban’s owners) have a policy that you can’t take any pictures and your mobiles have to be turned off (this appears to also be true at Caol Ila and Lagavulin, etc). Even though I tried to be sneaky, the tour guide watched like a hawk. It was apparently in the interests of safety amongst the spirits (so we were told), although they weren’t producing that day!

The distillery has no maltings, stores only a handful of casks which you don’t get to see, and sends all spirit straight off to Fife to be casked, warehoused and stored. So, basically, not overly impressive.

Nice enough included dram of their 14yr. I however bought the distillery only bottle, which is a touch over priced and you didn’t get to try. I heard their casks are sherry treated, but the tour guide had no idea on that question.

The one great thing… The tour ticket gives you £3 off a bottle… Plus if you join the free club (I did!) you get a passport which gives you free tours at any other Diageo distilleries, which means a free tour of Caol Ila and Lagavulin for me, ideal. 🙂

So… I think I’ll leave this at that… I’m on Islay now, which is a much more interesting experience!