Price: €72

The Ultimate Distillery Experience takes place at the actual Tullamore distillery and not the Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre; after booking the tour, the email confirmation said it was at the visitor centre, but a couple of days before I recevied another email to tell me the original email was incorrect and instead I should go to the distillery. I was already aware of this and had planned to be going to the distillery anyway.

The distillery is only a few years old, built in 2014, and doesn't return the correct location when searching on all mapping psites; Bing for example returns the distillery in the centre of Tullamore where the visitort centre is. Instead search for Distillery Roundabout.

Despite being a new distillery, there is no visitor centre or reception. When you arrive, the car park is outside of the distillery grounds; as you enter, you need to stop and speak to someone to lower the barriers. Once in the car park, you then need to wait for your tour start time and the guide to open the gate. I arrived a few minutes early and spent the time chatting to a couple of Americans from Nebraska (originally from Texas).

The Ultimate Distillery Experience is limited to 8 people and there was 7 on the tour I attended; five Americans and a couple from New Zealand (one of whom was originally from Virginia in the US).

Our tour guide was a yong lady called Orla who said she usually worked at the visitor centre, but comes to the distillery for this tour and it was only her third time conducting it.

The tour starts with an explanation of the history of Tullamore D.E.W. and the distilleries. You then don a jacket and hat to have a group photo taken (which the guide will email out to the group; I've not received this yet).

The tour then moves onto the distillery where you get a tour of the production area where the single pot still and single malt whiskey is produced. The is a large room containing all of the equipment used in the production of whiskey, with the exception of the mills whick are in a side room viewed via a window. This is a safety precaution as milling produces flour which is explosive.

Unfortunately, you need to leave cameras and phones by the door and the stills and whiskey safe are too far away and behind other equipment for you to get any photos of them. This is a shame as one of the still is of a shape I have never seen before. The production process was well described and you got to peer through the windows into the mash tun and wash backs.

You then leave the still house and head outside for the rest of the tour. First of all you visit the grain whiskey distillery (the first I have visited), have various other buildings or containers used in production or storage pointed out before a visit to a warehouse. In the warehouse you again have to leave your cameras by the door (although you can take some phoots from this vantage point). As you walk though the warehouse you'll hear about the different barrels and aging of the whiskey.

After this you walk back, by a different route, to the original building where you get to blend your own whiskey to bottle and take home.

There are three cask strength bottles set out for you to sample and then mix:

1. Sherry aged single pot still.
2. Bourbon aged single malt.
3. Bourbon aged single grain.

It is at this point that I wished that I wasn't driving as I had to be very careful. If you're not driving you can experiement with different measures of the available spirits to produce a blend to your taste. As I was driving, I had to do this carefully and without much sampling. I ended up mixing 50/30/20 of the single pot still/single malt/single grain.

Food in the form of bread, meats and cheese was provided at the end of the blending experience. This was not something I expected, but it was welcome and enthusiastically consumed by the group.

After the blending experience, you get to sample three whiskies:

1. Tullamore D.E.W. XO Caribbean Rum Cask Finish Blended Whiskey
2. Tullamore Dew 12 Year Old Whiskey 70cl
3. Tullamore D.E.W. 18 Year Old Single Malt Single Malt Whiskey

Irish disitlleries are not prepped with sample pots for you to carry away, but had no problem with me using my own pots (I'm an experienced distillery visitor and come prepared).

The final sample is a Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey 70cl mixed with tonic water over ice.

I've really only had the standard Tullamore DEW and enjoyed all of the samples except the Whiskey and tonmic, but this is because I'm not keen on the taste of tonic.

For those who needed taxis, the guide organised this for them while we were tasting the samples.

The tour was well thought through and presented. With it being a new distillery I was surprised at the lack of visitor facilities. Most new distilleries have visitor centres and are set up for tours, but this is very much a working distillery with the tours almost an afterthought. This was surprising as it is owned by William Grant & Sons who also own Glenfiddich and The Balvenie in Scotland so I expected a more visitor centric experience. I suspect that the original intention might have been to have all tours handled at the visitor centre and then found people still asked about visiting the disitllery itself.

I'd originally looked to visit this distillery in September when I did my tourt of Ireland, but couldn't fit it into my schedule; at that time this tour cost €150, but has now been reduced to €90 and I got it on a special summer price of €72. So ultimetaly, I'm quite happy I couldn't get for a visit last year.

Price: €28

Tullamore Dew was my second distillery tour of my visit to Ireland. I did the Whiskey Wise Master Class which is an experience at the vistor centre in the old bonded warehouse and not the new distillery.

The tour was very good and intersting; the guide knew the subject and gave good overview of the both history and process of making Tullamore Dew. The visitor centre is very well laid out with some historical artifacts as well as some small reproductions of some copper pot stills (the guide wasn't sure if they were scaled down replicas oof the actual stills).

This was the first non-distillery visit I've done; it is a very different experience to visiting a distillery, even one which is silent at the time of visit.

On this tour you get to sample six 10ml samples of various Tullamore Dew whiskies. The guided tasting was well done with information provided on each of the samples whiskeies. The tasting occurs in the D.E. Williams Branch House which is a reproduction of an old store. Tastfully done and a near perfect place to sample the whiskies (leather wing back armchair in front of an open fire or woodburning stove required for perfection).

This was the third most expensive whiskey related experience I did in Ireland. It was good, but not as good as Kilbeggan where I did the Distillers Tour which cost only €2 more. Next time I am in Ireland I intend to return to Tullamore Dew and do the Ultimate Distillery Experience which, currently costs €150 and includes lunch and the behind the scenes tour at the distillery itself.

As a side note, the website says there is ample parking and followed the Tullamore Dew Visitor Centre signs, but I couldn't actually find any parking onsite and ended up parking on a nearby street. I was there on a Sunday so street parking was free, but during the week the street parking is pay and display.