The Ord distillery dates back to 1838 it is the only single malt distillery on the Black Isle. The water for the mashing was taken from the Cuckoo Well and employed 18 people in the early days. Now it has 7 was stills and is owned by Diageo now the water come from the White Burn.
Founded in 1790 and according to records, this is the fourth oldest distillery in Scotland after Glenturret, Strathisla, and Bowmore, Balblair creates its malt whisky slowly, and it is then matured at the distillery in the tradtional dunnage warehouses on earthen floors. The visitors centre provides a welcoming, relaxed environment in which to enjoy a tasting. Tours are available at 11:00 and 14:00 costing £10 per person, and as a maximum of ten people are accommodated per tour, advance bookings are essential. Visitors to the distillery can purchase a bottle from a hand selected cask which you are able to fill, cork, seal, and label yourself. Your name will then go into the ledger and you’ll have a unique gift to take home with you.
Now owned by Moët Hennesy, the Glenmorangie Distillery was founded in 1843 with production starting in 1849. Glenmorangie is famous the world over for its whisky with the first exports starting as long ago as 1880. Moving with modern times, the Distillery installed an anaerobic digestion plant in 2017 to process and break down by products such as pot-ale and lees which in turn means the production process is more sustainable. This has removed the need for them to be taken away from the Distillery by tanker for processing elsewhere. Tours and tastings are possible with the Original Tour costing £7.50 per person. It is possible to visit the tasting room without doing a tour. A range of Glenmorangie Single Malt Whiskies are available to purchase and try in the relaxed environment of the tasting room.
Johhny who was a very experienced local person, took us from the meeting place and helped us book a tour for Balblair distillery. We had visited in total three distilleries as written in the itinerary and they were the best choices for us. It took 5-6 hours, we travelled through wonderful landscape. Johnny was very kind and friendly. He gave us an unforgettable day.
We've visited Balblair, Glenmorangie, Singleton distilleries. Our tour driver John was extremely kind and helpful. Highly recommended to everyone.
Everything perfect. Johnny was such a good "Virgilio" and bring us in nice distilleries and lovely places
It very expensive for simply a drive to three distilleries. On top of the cost we had to pay an additional 15-50 GPB per person, per distillery. The driver was difficult to understand and did not add much information to the tour, history of Scotland nor the area.
It is quite expensive to do the tour and then only to have to pay for a distillery tour on top of it. Information needs to be updated with more detail as pricing was incorrect. Overall tour was good and enjoyable Our tour guide Johnnie was friendly and obliging.
This tour was great. It was just us so it made it a little more perfect as we could customize it how we wanted it. Our tour guide Johnny was a great wealth of knowledge and did all he could do to find me a highland cow for a quick picture!!!
Johnny was an excellent driver and tour guide. He knows the area well and will stop whenever something catches your eye. Just make sure you email ahead to know what distillery your are touring then call and make a reservation at that distillery for the time he indicates. We loved spending the day with him! Highly recommended!
Johnny was a great driver and full of stories about the local area. We went to Balblair, Glenmorangie and Glen Ord which were great to experience very different distilleries.
The tour is basically a taxi. There's no "guide". The tour operator does not book even the distillery tour slot. Of course, you have to pay for the tour and tasting yourself - it isn't part of the fee, but I feel that the expectation that guests should call the distillery from their home countries and book their own slots is ridiculous. I mean, I might as well have picked up a taxi in Inverness and told them where to take me. Also, since our "tour" exceeded 4.5 hours (which is bound to happen since the travel time itself is more than 2 hours, and a single distillery tour takes over an hour, plus half an hour each for the tastings at the distilleries, and another 20 mins for a quick lunch stop), we were asked to pay 50 pounds more for each additional hour. Johnny was kind enough to say that he'll try to work something out with the folks through whom we had booked the tour, so we haven't paid the excess yet, but I feel that this tour isn't very well thought out and planned. Note that both Trip Advisor and Viator (through whom we booked this) states 5 hours as the tour time, but the tour operator insists that it's a 4.5 hour tour.
Johnny is a jovial chap who is eager to share his love of northern Scotland as he drives you to visit three distilleries. Got to see some beautiful countryside. You will tour/taste at one of them, but only do tastings at the other two. These are all pay as you go. We toured and tasted at Balblair. We have visited other distilleries and after a while they are all just variations on a theme. So this tour was largely ideal. The Balblair tour was led by Simon who shared the very interesting history of the land and farm that one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland sits on. I am familiar with the other two distilleries: Glenn morangie and singleton. The singleton tasting room was very nice and bar tenders knowledgeable. The glen morangie tasting room was small with selections I was not familiar with and a pourer who was less than helpful.
Driver was good, and we booked quite last minute, but it was just a driver for four hours. I had to pay for an extra 90 mins and book the tours myself (which wasn't very clear in the booking). But having booked balblair and Glenmorangie, we had a good day.
Johnny our driver/guide was an awesome guide! Balblair Distillery was educational and the scotch excellent! We had an excellent time!
Best tour ever! We had such a wonderful trip! I would highly recommend this company. Our guide was friendly, informative and very accommodating.
Johnny was a fantastic driver and guide. He took the side roads to show us the towns en route to our distilleries and didn’t simply speed up the main road. He also has a wonderful knowledge of the north of Scotland that came in handy a number of times even for our day trip together. I’d certainly recommend his service to anyone needing transport north of Inverness.
Not being able to do a distillery tour due to the person who was sent had no idea what distilleries we were supposed to go to. We did not have a distillery tour we had a person to drive us to the distilleries and the one distillery he suggested was 45 minutes in the opposite direction of the other 2 we had gone to 1st. When we arrived at Singleton we were unable to go on a tour as we had to be back at the cruise ship and didn't have enough time so the one excursion I booked specifically to tour a distillery was very disappointing. I do not blame the driver as he was not given the details from Johnnie who we thought was going to give us the tour as we had read good reviews. The only good thing was we were able to do some tasting and when we ask if there was anywhere else to buy alcohol he suggested a grocery store in which we found something that was not at the other 3 distilleries only good thing about this tour.
Our favorite part was Johnny, our guide! He was so personal and worked hard to show us things we would have never known were around us. Above and beyond our hopes for the tour. We met a new friend.
Johnny was amazing. Super friendly and gave recommendations on which distilleries to book with. Also took us by Dunrobin Castle just for photos on our way back. Highly recommend
The driver and ride were very friendly and comfortable but Viator has no clue about these tours and what is to be expected there are too many uncertainties and they can’t deliver even 50% of what they promise
The trip was excellent and so convenient. We were picked up from our door step and saw some great off the map places along with the large distillers. Perfect trip, would have Johnny be our tour guide again next time.
Johnny was great! We didn’t realize we had to make reservations for each distillery ahead of time. But he used his connections and got us reservations for 3 different distilleries. We had a blast, learned a lot about the history in the area, and even stopped to get ice cream! Highly recommend on your next visit to the highlands.
Excellent tour operator, very knowledgeable of area and history. Goes above and beyond to make trip truly memorable.
Being able to visit the distilleries despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic was great. Hope that planning will be easier once we return to normalcy.
Johnny was a very cordial and great guide for our distillery tour. We can highly recommend him! Kind regards Daniel and Beke
We had a great experience with this tour. Johnny is a great guide. He told us loads about the different areas as we were passing through on the way to the distillery’s. He even brought us to Dunrobin Castle after our distillery tours and tastings were over and have loads of recommendations of other things to do. You can tailor the tour to what you want and Johnny will advise which distillery’s are best to book and in which order so there is enough time to get to each one. Just be sure to book them in enough time as they usually get booked out.
We were taken by Johnny to quite a few places and he’s knowledge was amazing! Very positive and smiling we even had lunch together! Would definitely recommend his service to any one!
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