Price: $35

I thought about booking the tour in advance, but didn’t as I was flying into Dublin and there was always the possibility of being delayed. My flight was due to land at 1020, but landed at 0955. “Great”, I thought, I should be able to get to the Powerscourt distillery in plenty of time.

I almost booked a tour while I was at the airport, but held off. After discovering how crap a service Hertz would supply on the hire car front, I was pleased I had held off. After I finally got the hire car, I drove down to the distillery, arriving in the car park at 1159.

When you arrive at the estate, there is a booth at the entrance with a pricelist below. I don’t know what was on the pricelist, as I mentioned I wanted to visit the distillery and was given directions to drive straight to the end.

When arriving at the distillery I checked in at the desk and was able to buy a ticket for the tour starting in 1 minute. With the distillery having only opened for tours in the last couple of weeks (and the announcement on Twitter a mere four days before my arrival, they were not busy. On the tour there was two German brothers and I.

The tour was conducted by Caleb who at one point mentioned that this was only his second job after leaving college (I feel old repeating this).

The tour starts with an audiovisual presentation which introduces the area, the estate and the founding of the distillery. It was quite a good introductory video as I know little about the history of Ireland in general and Wicklow in particular (the video is head and shoulders over the cringe-fest produced by the Ben Nevis distillery).

After the video we started the tour by stepping through a door into the main room of the distillery, which contains all of the equipment. The room is a large one with lots of space for adding more equipment in future. The floor is a mix of open grid and flat panels overlaid which are very noisy to walk on. These were apparently added with thoughts of visitors footwear not being suitable for the open grids; a better approach might have been to specify allowed footwear (it would certainly be quieter).

I don’t want to spoil the tour for anyone else, but the tour was very thorough and well-presented. The distillery has only been producing for 10 months and conducting tours for two weeks (as of 26/5/2019). Because of this, I was actually surprised at how good the tour was; I expected many more rough edges, but a lot of thought and planning has obviously taken place.

The ownership and involvement of people in the distillery was mentioned at one point and there are many people with involvement in distilleries elsewhere involved, so Powerscourt has obviously benefited from this on the tour side (and presumably production as well).

The tour I did included a visit to the warehouse where you see the filling machine as well as racks of casks. The tasting on this tour is conducted in a plush room overlooking the distillery floor. We were sat in leather armchairs (not wingbacks, unfortunately) and had three samples to try.

As the distillery has only been in production for 10 months there is no whisky distilled here to try, but they do have a range of whiskies which they sell. If I remember correctly, Caleb mentioned that they are buying whisky from the distillery their head distiller came from to sell under the Fercullen brand rather than a Powerscourt brand.

This is to avoid a potential conflict with Powers whiskey; similar to Knockdhu selling under the anCnoc brand to avoid confusion with Knockando.

The three samples we tried were:

1. 10-year old single grain.
2. Premium blend (containing whiskies between the ages of 7 and 17).
3. 14-year old single malt.

I’m not doing tasting notes, as my sense of taste and smell aren’t that good; I enjoyed all of the samples with the single malt being the stand-out choice.

Being such a new distillery, the tour was small with only the three of us. As word of the distillery gets out, I imagine that the tours will get busier, so arriving 1 minute before the tour starts will not be feasible. The Powerscourt Estate itself is very busy, so quite of few of these visitors, plus those visiting just for the distillery will be visiting.

The tour was very good; Caleb knows his stuff and is able to give good and clear explanations of the processes. I’d gladly revisit this distillery in a couple years (actually at least 26 months), so that I can see how they have progressed and to sample the whisky.