DISTILLERY TOURS · TASTINGS · THE WORLD'S WHISKY
Find the dram. Book the distillery.
Single malts in the Scottish Highlands, pot stills in Dublin, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the quiet warehouses of Speyside. Real reviews of the distillery tours and tastings worth the trip, in the towns whisky was made for.
Worth a trip for the dram alone
Three regions built on whisky.
Some places you go for the sights. Scotland, Ireland and Kentucky you go for the glass: the Highland malt, the Liberties pot still, the bourbon rickhouse. These are the regions travellers plan a whole trip around.
Scotland
Edinburgh & the Highlands
This is where Scotch begins for most visitors. An Edinburgh tasting room runs you through the five whisky regions in an afternoon, then the road north opens up: the Speyside distilleries clustered around Dufftown, the lone Highland stills, the warehouses where the cask does its slow work. Nowhere else lets you taste the whole spectrum of single malt this close to where it is made.
- 1 Edinburgh: The Scotch Whisky Experience Tour and Tasting
- 2 Edinburgh: Underground Vaults Evening Ghost Tour with Whisky
- 3 Edinburgh: Whisky Tasting with History and Storytelling
Ireland
Dublin & Irish Whiskey
Irish whiskey is having its moment and Dublin is the front door. The big names sit in the Liberties, a short walk apart: Jameson on Bow Street, Teeling firing up the first new city distillery in generations, the Roe & Co stillhouse, the whiskey museum that walks you through it all. Triple-distilled, smooth, and best learned with a guide and a comparison flight.
- 1 Dublin: Jameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with Tastings
- 2 Dublin Jameson Distillery Bow St. Tour and Tasting 45 mins
- 3 Dublin Irish Whiskey Museum and Gallery Guided Tour with Tasting
Kentucky
Louisville & the Bourbon Trail
Bourbon country starts in Louisville and rolls south through Bardstown and out to Lexington. The rickhouses stand black with their slumbering barrels, the tour ends at a tasting bar pouring the small-batch and the single-barrel, and the drive between distilleries is half the pleasure. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is the most-walked whiskey route in America for a reason.
- 1 Bourbon Tour (03) : Buffalo Trace, Woodford, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, Other
- 2 Whispers on Whiskey Row: Murder, Crime, & Ghost Tour w/Cocktail
- 3 Beyond the Barrel: NuLu Walking Bourbon & Food Pairing Experience
If you only book one
The whisky tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every distillery tour and tasting on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to book it.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Whisky Tours Right Now
Edinburgh Scotch tastings, Dublin pot-still tours, Speyside warehouse visits, the Kentucky rickhouses. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a region
The best whisky tours, town by town.
Edinburgh for the Scotch tasting rooms, Dublin for the pot stills, Louisville for the bourbon rickhouses. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the distillery tours worth booking there.
Where to go thirsty
Three whisky countries, three different drams.
Start with what is in your glass. Each of these is a whisky country the site covers deeply, with a different kind of distillery day waiting at the end of it.
Edinburgh
Five whisky regions in an afternoon.
Edinburgh is where most people first taste Scotch properly. A guided tasting room on the Royal Mile walks you from a gentle Lowland through Speyside and the Highlands to a peaty Islay, glass by glass, with someone explaining what you are nosing. The fastest way to find out which malt is yours before you head north for the distilleries.
See the best Edinburgh whisky tours →Dublin
The pot-still trail through the Liberties.
Dublin’s distilleries sit a few cobbled streets apart in the old Liberties: Jameson on Bow Street, Teeling firing the first new city stillhouse in generations, the Roe & Co experience, and the whiskey museum that ties it together. A guided tour walks you through the mash, the wash and the copper, then sits you down with a comparison flight of pot still and single grain.
See the best Dublin whisky tours →The Highlands & Speyside
Out to where the casks sleep.
North of Inverness the distilleries thin out and the scenery takes over: the Speyside cluster around Dufftown and the Spey, the lone Highland stills, the dunnage warehouses where the barrels breathe in the damp cold for a decade or more. A day out from the city takes you into the still room and the bonded store, glass in hand, for the drams the gift shop never sells.
See the best Highland whisky tours →Kentucky bourbon
Down the Bourbon Trail from Louisville.
Kentucky keeps its bourbon in tall black rickhouses where the heat and the cold work the spirit into the oak. A trail tour runs you from the Louisville distilleries out toward Bardstown, through the fermenters and the still house, and finishes at a tasting bar pouring the small-batch and the single-barrel side by side.
- 1 Bourbon Tour (03) : Buffalo Trace, Woodford, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, Other
- 2 Whispers on Whiskey Row: Murder, Crime, & Ghost Tour w/Cocktail
- 3 Beyond the Barrel: NuLu Walking Bourbon & Food Pairing Experience
By the dram
How far behind the still do you want to go?
An hour-long Edinburgh tasting flight. A classic Dublin distillery tour through the copper. A full Highland day drawn straight from the cask. Pick the one that sounds like your kind of afternoon with a glass.
Just a flight
Edinburgh, the introduction.An hour in a city tasting room walking the five Scotch regions, glass by glass, with someone explaining what you are nosing. No early start, no long drive, just the lowland-to-Islay spectrum laid out in front of you.
The distillery day
Dublin, the working stillhouse.Into the Liberties for the real thing: the mash, the wash, the gleaming copper pot stills and the warehouse smell, finished with a guided pour of the single grain and the small-batch. The classic half-day every visitor should do once.
The full cask
The Highlands, all the way in.A run out from Inverness deep into Speyside and the glens: warehouse tastings drawn straight from the cask, the cooperage, the founder's reserve, the drams the gift shop never sees. A whole day given over to the malt.
Nashville
Tennessee whiskey, and the road to Lynchburg.
Tennessee whiskey is bourbon’s close cousin, charcoal-mellowed through sugar-maple before it ever sees a barrel. From Nashville you can taste your way through the city’s own distilleries between honky-tonks, or take the day trip out to Lynchburg where Jack Daniel’s has been doing it the same way since 1866. The Music City pour, with a soundtrack.
See all 29 Nashville whiskey tours →By region
Pick a town and plan the dram.
Edinburgh for the Scotch tasting rooms. Dublin for the pot stills. Inverness for the Highland distilleries. Louisville for the rickhouses. Glasgow for the new city stills. Nashville for the Tennessee pour.
More whisky towns
More towns worth a thirsty weekend.
Belfast and Cork for the Irish stills, Oban and Aberdeen for the coastal Scotch, Lexington for the bourbon, Toronto and Tokyo for the rye and the Japanese single malt. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three towns, three distillery days
Pick a town, plan the day around the glass.
A tasting-room afternoon in Edinburgh, a pot-still morning in Dublin, a rickhouse day out of Louisville. Three towns, three very different ways to spend a day with a dram.
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