WHISKY & WHISKEY · AROUND THE WORLD
Find the dram. Book the distillery.
Scotch tastings in Edinburgh, the Bourbon Trail out of Louisville, Irish pot stills in Dublin, Tennessee whiskey down the road from Nashville. Real reviews of the distillery tours and tastings worth your time, in the places that made the whisky famous.
Worth the trip for the dram alone
Three regions that built the whisky world.
Scotch in Scotland, whiskey in Ireland, bourbon and Tennessee whiskey in the American South. These three regions wrote the rules everyone else followed, and each one is a different glass and a different kind of day out.
Scotland
Edinburgh
The home of Scotch, and the easiest place to start. A short walk off the Royal Mile puts you in front of a flight from every whisky region of Scotland, from the soft Speyside malts to the peat-smoke of Islay, with someone to walk you through what is in the glass. Tastings, the big visitor experiences and day trips out to Speyside all leave from here.
- 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 is triple-distilled and made for sipping, and Dublin is where its comeback is loudest. Jameson on Bow Street, Teeling in the Liberties, the Irish Whiskey Museum on Grafton Street: working still-houses and tasting rooms within a few streets of each other, each one a tour that ends with a proper pour and the difference between pot still and grain explained.
- 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
Tennessee
Nashville
This is American whiskey country. Nashville sits an easy run from Lynchburg, where every drop of Jack Daniel’s is still charcoal-mellowed and barrelled, and the city itself has filled up with distilleries of its own. Tour the line, taste the white dog next to the aged stuff, and learn what makes Tennessee whiskey its own thing, not just bourbon by another name.
- 1 Nashville to Jack Daniel’s Distillery Bus Tour + Whiskey Tastings
- 2 Nashville Brewery & Distillery Tour by Golf Cart
- 3 Nashville’s Big Machine Distillery Guided Tour with Tastings
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 people come home telling everyone they know to book.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Whisky Tours Right Now
Edinburgh tastings, Dublin distillery tours, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the run out to Jack Daniel’s. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a city
The best whisky tours, city by city.
Edinburgh for the Scotch, Dublin for the Irish pot stills, Louisville for the Bourbon Trail. Pick the city you are headed to and we will show you the distillery tours and tastings worth booking there.
Which whiskey
Start with the glass you want in your hand.
Scotch, Irish or bourbon is the first thing to settle, because each one is a different trip. Pick the style you are after and we will point you at the region that does it best.
Edinburgh
Every region of Scotch in one glass.
You do not have to drive to Islay to taste it. A short walk off the Royal Mile puts a flight in front of you, from the honeyed Speyside malts to the sea-salt peat of the islands, with someone to nose each one alongside you and explain what the cask did to it. The fastest way to find the dram you actually like.
See the best Edinburgh whisky tours →Dublin
Where Irish whiskey came back.
A few streets of the old city hold the lot: Jameson on Bow Street, Teeling in the Liberties, the Irish Whiskey Museum on Grafton Street. Each is a working still-house or tasting room, and each tour ends with a proper pour and the thing that sets Irish apart, triple-distilled, smooth, pot still and grain side by side.
See the best Dublin whiskey tours →Louisville
The whole Bourbon Trail starts here.
Buffalo Trace, Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Wild Turkey: the famous Kentucky names sit within an easy drive of Louisville, and a guided trail run does the back roads so you can taste at every stop. Watch the corn mash bubble, smell the rickhouses, and follow new-make spirit all the way to a barrel-aged pour in one long afternoon.
See the best Louisville bourbon tours →Speyside & the Highlands
Where the single malts come from.
More distilleries sit in Speyside than anywhere else on earth, and Inverness is the door to it. A day out crosses the Moray coast and the Cairngorms with a driver on the roads, dropping in on two or three working distilleries so every dram counts and you see the river, the barley and the warehouses behind the name on the bottle.
- 1 1 Day Moray Coast Tour with Speyside Whisky from Inverness
- 2 From Inverness: Cairngorms National Park and Whisky Tour
- 3 Distillery and Brewery Tour in Inverness Scotland
How you take it
How far into the whisky do you want to go?
An hour with a flight of drams in Edinburgh. An afternoon inside a working Dublin distillery. A full Speyside trail with a driver and three stops. Pick the one that sounds like your kind of day.
A taste
Edinburgh, a flight of drams.An hour off the Royal Mile with a few measures poured in front of you and someone to explain what you are nosing. The gentle way in: no early start, no minibus, just the glass and the story behind it.
A distillery
Dublin, behind the still-house doors.A working distillery on Bow Street or in the Liberties: the mash, the copper pot stills, the warehouse smell, and a proper comparative tasting at the end. The afternoon most people remember the trip for.
The whole trail
Speyside, distillery to distillery.A full day out of Inverness through Speyside and the Highlands, two or three distilleries deep, a driver doing the roads so every dram counts. The way to see where the great single malts actually come from.
Nashville
Music City runs on whiskey.
An hour and a half south of Nashville, every drop of Jack Daniel’s is still filtered through ten feet of sugar-maple charcoal before it ever sees a barrel, the step that makes Tennessee whiskey its own thing. The day trip rides out to Lynchburg and back, and the city itself has filled up with distilleries you can walk between, white dog and aged pours side by side.
See all 29 Nashville whiskey tours →By city
Pick a city and follow the whisky.
Edinburgh for the Scotch flights. Dublin for the Irish pot stills. Nashville for the Tennessee whiskey. Louisville for the Bourbon Trail. Inverness for Speyside. Glasgow for the city distilleries.
More places
More towns worth a dram.
Cork and Belfast for Irish whiskey, Aberdeen for the road to Speyside, Toronto for the old Distillery District, New Orleans for a rum-soaked detour. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three towns, three whisky days
Pick a base and plan the day around the dram.
A city distillery afternoon in Glasgow, an Irish distillery day out of Cork, a Speyside trail from Aberdeen. Three bases, three very different ways to spend a day on the whisky.
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