Price: £30

Tours at Tullibardine are booked by ringing the distillery and speaking to someone in the visitor centre, but as long as you know which tour you want and when it seems a smooth experience.
The distillery is visible from the A9 from both directions as you approach, although when heading Noth it appears quite suddenly as you come round a corner and it clears from behind the trees; however, there are signs on the approach before toy give you warning.
When you turn off the main road the distillery is just around the corner on the right. Once in the distillery grounds, follow the signs around to the back of the property where there is quite a few parking spaces.
The tour guide we had for this tour is a local from Blackford (the village hosting the distillery). I did was the Bonded Tour where you see the production areas followed by the bonded warehouse.
The tour covers the history of distillery in brief, from its origin as a brewery and transition into a distillery, including the mothballing and reopening.
The distillery as seen changes since my first visit when it sat next to a closed down shopping centre. The distillery now occupies the whole site and has a cooperage on site; in 18 months or so there may be a tour including the cooperage. This would be really good to see, and was first mentioned to me on our first tour in 2015; as Tullibardine is one of the few distilleries with a cooperage on site, it would make sense for them to take advantage of this and include it in a tour.
You see whole process of making whisky including the milling, mashing, fermentation and distillation. The process was both well and thoroughly described by the tour guide.
I’ve actually forgotten the, I’m sure, very obvious name for the machine which separates stones and other debris from the grain prior to mashing, but this is the first machine you ee when entering the production facility. Or it is at the moment; you may not see it future as the guide mentioned that the tour was going to be reorganised to allow them to run more frequent tours and avoid people doubling back on themselves.
The production area at Tullibardine is very compact and fits into one room; the mash tun was being filled with water when we went in and we got the opportunity to take a look inside. The guide called one of the stillmen over to open a wash back so we could look inside. Another washback was being steam cleaned at the time so steam was billowing out which I’ve not seen before.
The bonded warehouse was the next step on the tour where you get a walkthrough including a discussion of the casks used in maturing the whisky.
The final part of the tour is the tasting. On the bonded tour, you get to sample two spirits which everyone tastes and then get to select one of three for yourself. The two everyone tries are:

1. Tullibardine 20 Year Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky

You then get to pick one more from:

1. Tullibardine 225 Sauternes Finish Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
2. Tullibardine 228 Burgundy Finish Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
3. Tullibardine 500 Sherry Finish Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky

This tour was very thorough and also very enjoyable; a nice way to open my 2019 tour of Scotland.