Price: £50

The tours at The Balvenie are very popular and must by booked in advance; I'd recommend calling to make the booking rather than emailing.

I was on the 1130 tour and had six other people on the same tour. There was meant to be some others on it too, not sure how many, but they didn't show up (which seems quite common across distilleries). The tour guide was Charlie, who recognised me from my last visit several years ago; I didn't think I was that memorable, but there you go. He's one of several people at different distilleries who remembered me from previous visits.

Photography was allowed in all areas with the exception of the warehouse at the end.

The tour at The Balvenie is much more complete than at most distilleries as you see the usual elements, but they also do their own floor maltings and have a cooperage which are both included.

The tour starts with an introduction to the distillery and its history before moving to the production areas. The tour starts with a visit to the maltings where we saw the steep as well as the malting floors in operation (the only other distillery you might see this is at BenRiach, but only around the time of the Spirit of Speyside festival in late-April/May). In the same building is the kiln and malt drying floor, both of which we saw; the drying floor was prepared, but not in use and the kiln was lit, but not fully stoked.

On the tour you are told about the mill, but don't see it although the milling process is described and you see the grist produced. As we passed from the mash tun to the wash backs, we passed the destoner which was in operation and was explained to us. There are a lot of wash backs at The Balvenie (you'll need to visit to discover exactly why), and we got to look into a few of them as well as taste the wash from one of them; this was done by Charlie extracting some from a wash back and pouring it into your palm (a much more hygienic way than some distilleries I've been to where they pass the container around the group to taste from directly.

Next we went to see the spirit stills and spirit safes; the wash stills are in a different room, although passing through the same spirit safes so you don;tsee the, but the entire distillation process was described.

This is the point many distillery tours end, although some take you onto a warehouse. At The Balvenie, they have a cooperage, so we took a short drive down in a Land Rover to the cooperage, passing 60,000+ barrels waiting for repair before being filled. We got 10-15 minutes in the cooperage where you get to see the coppers and others working on repairing barrels.

Then it was back into the Land Rover and back to the main part of the distillery for a visit to Warehouse No. 4. In here we saw barrels aging and you have the opportunity to fill your own 20cl bottle of The Balvenie straight from the cask using a copper dog for £30.

We then went back to the visitor centre for the tasting of five expressions of The Balvenie; if you're a driver, you need to bring your own drivers pack for taking your samples away with you.

The five expressions we tried were:

1. The Balvenie Double Wood 12 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky
2. Balvenie Single Barrel 12 Year Old Scotch Whisky
3. Balvenie Whisky Caribbean Cask 14 Year Old
4. Balvenie Doublewood Whisky 17 Year Old
5. Balvenie 2003 Peat Week 14 Year Old

The Balvenie tour from Charlie was very good and very detailed, as you would expect of a tour and tasting which takes three hours. This is also your only opportunity in Speyside to see floor maltings in action.