Touring the Old Bushmills Distillery

We were finally met by one of the staff at the Old Bushmills Distillery for our tour of the distillery. It seems that we would be one of the last batches of visitors to come in. The waiting time here isn’t that long and you get to be entertained by watching some videos at the waiting area. The video was quite informative as well. We found out that the Old Bushmills Distillery is the oldest licensed distillery in the world. I supposed that means that there were older distilleries but this is probably the oldest legal one. Another interesting fact was the origin of the word whiskey itself. We were told that the word whiskey came from the Gaelic word uisce beatha, specifically uisce. The letters are all individually pronounced, the C is a hard C. Whiskey is just an Anglicized form of the Irish word uisce. Anyway, we were quickly brought to the grounds of the distillery, but that mean going out of the building. It seems that the actualy distillery in a separate building.

Unfortunately, photography is not allow in the distillery ground. We were presented with a vat and we were explained how the Bushmills whiskey is made. It seems that they are very particular about the ingredients which they use to make the whiskey. The water is taken from a nearby tributary of the river Bush. I thought it was surprising that they still use natural water to make these liquor. I guess that it what makes their whiskey so special. To make the product consistent you shouldn’t touch the ingredients. There were large vats of ingredients just fermenting. We were shown various stages of fermenting in different vats. Some of them where just too big to be seen directly that we were only shown a sample liquid. The distillery can get hot as what we were warned of. You would already smell the alcohol in the air here.

In the one of the buildings, we were shone the barrels which they use to age the whiskey. Like the other ingredients, the quality and the source of the barrels is very important since it imparts flavor into the final product. You can see samples of aged whiskey as well. I find it incredible that producing something like this can take a very long time. No wonder it can be quite expensive. We were told that the distillery has a special twelve year aged whiskey which is only for sale there. I’m not sure what makes it so special since there are older whiskeys that are produced here. The final building houses the packaging area but there didn’t seem to be anyone working that at the time. It was a weekend so I’m guessing that they don’t work on weekends. The final stop was the bar. This is probably where the bulk of the ticket cost goes. The bar is where you claim your swig of Bushmills whiskey. It is not a lot but it was enough for me to feel it. I don’t recall consuming whiskey before so it was a different experience for me. I don’t have any like for liquor but I purchased one of those exclusive twelve year bottles just in case we have a party.

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