Price: £40

I booked the Heritage Experience online; this tour is limited to 10 people and there were 10 booked on the one I was on. I was early and availed myself of the cafe while I waited; the other attendees were all late. Upon arrival I was asked if I would like to check my coat, which I did when told the whole tour would take palce in the one building. I also confirmed that I was drivign and was told my samples would be given to me in bottles.

The new Macallan distillery was completed quite recently and has been dividing opinion. It is very modern and shopping mall/airport in appearance. I was the first person through the door when they opened; there is a "greeter" stood by the door to welcome everyone into the distillery (something I first saw at Asda, woned by Walmart, in the UK a few years ago). The building inside is very modern, all sharp corners, high ceilings and concrete; the ceiling is exposed pine. In the background, gentle piano music is playing.

While the distillery is largely empty, all of the above is fine, but as soon as more people are present, noise becomes much more of a problem as there is no noise dampening, other than the wooden ceiling high above, so any noise echoes through the distillery and a large number of people produces a lot of noise.

When the tour started, as I say, the other nine people were not there. The tour was not delayed for them, but started on time with an introduction to the history of The Macallan; one of the late attendees arrived five minutes into this part of the tour.

The tour then moved onto the bottle wall where historical bottles of Macallan are on display; at this stage the first sample of whisky was handed out, The Macallan Double Cask Gold Highland Single Malt Whisky; I didn't see mine at this time, but received it just before the tour moved to the production area. It was at the bottle wall that the missing eight people joined the tour and, again, the tour was not repeated for them. For those already present, this is good because it means time isn't wasted recovering what has already been covered.

We then moved to the production area which looks very impressive, but you don't actually get that near most of the equipment. Everything is arranged into four circular pods with three of them hosting metal wash backs and wash and spirit stills and the fourth, at the far end the largest mash tun if Scotland.

We did stand in the mash tun pod and get a look into the mash tun and skirted along the edge of one of the wash back/still pods, but didn't get into one of these pods.

Part of the tour is done using multimedia displays. The information given out is good and quite detailed, but the tour feels more remote than many I have done.

Photographs were allowed anywhere where you weren't stood on a metal grill; the circular pods are all metal grill based with only the walkways down the sides allowing photos to be taken.

After covering production, the tour moved to the other end of the distillery for an audio-visual presentation on the casks used and then another on the colour of the whiskey. We then moved downstairs to the tasting room where we samples the new make spirit and the following whiskies:

1. Macallan 12 Year Old Triple Cask Single Malt Whisky
2. Macallan Fine Oak 18 Years Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
3. Macallan Edition No.3 Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Drivers like myself were provided small bottles to decant our samples into.

I have bought a lot of whiskey over the years, but none of it has been Macallan. I've always regarded it as being overpriced for what it was. A lot of people like Macallan and I know a few who will never drink anything else. For those people, the tour of the Macallan will probably be very enjoyable, but as magnificent a feat of design and engineering as the distillery it is, the tour isn't all that good. It's difficult to pin down, but I think an over-reliance on shiny audio-visual rather than getting you close to the equipment and talking you though it from there, leaves the tour feeling somewhat cold and remote.