Why I Choose Balblair

Balblair is usually the distillery I recommend when guests ask to include a whisky visit, even though its whisky isn’t among my favourites. That might seem an odd admission from somebody suggesting you go there, but what I enjoy drinking and what I want to show guests are two different considerations. Near Edderton in Easter Ross, Balblair gives us a chance to follow whisky-making in a place where the old buildings still shape the experience, and where you can understand what’s happening without feeling you’ve spent the morning inside an enormous factory.

John Ross established the business in 1790, but the distillery you visit today owes much to its move half a mile in 1894, when being beside the railway made it easier to bring in coal and barley and send whisky out to a wider market. That was a practical decision about running the business, yet it left us the Victorian sandstone buildings, courtyard, red chimney and pagoda roof that make Balblair such an appealing place to visit. You’re looking at buildings that still have work to do, with casks maturing in the traditional warehouses around them.

The size of the operation helps too, because with a single mash tun, one wash still and one spirit still, you can follow the process without losing track of where you are in it. Equipment has changed and technology has found its way in, as it has to in a working business, but the production hasn’t swallowed the character of the place. The sandstone walls and dunnage warehouses remain part of the visit, which makes it easy to understand why Ken Loach chose Balblair as a location for his 2012 film The Angels’ Share. There was already a convincing distillery there, getting on with making whisky.

For many of our tours, it also fits comfortably into the first morning, giving guests something to explore soon after we set off. People who have arrived thinking mostly of Speyside begin to discover how much whisky-making there is farther north, and a couple of drams before lunch can do a good deal to get a touring party talking. I do the driving while they compare what’s in their glasses, and by the time we leave, they’ve seen a working distillery in surroundings that help explain how it came to be there. That’s why I recommend Balblair, whatever bottle I might choose for myself at home.

To learn more, book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.