New whisky room opens at Lancaster Spirits Company

A new whisky room has opened at Lancaster Spirits Company and visitors are now able to book tours to take a look around and sample their products.

Transcript

00:00We talked about doing this 10 years ago.

00:04When you're making beer, the logical progression is that you look to maybe make

00:08whiskey, because obviously whiskey is distilled beer, essentially.

00:12But it's a huge investment, it takes a lot of time to set it up.

00:16Whiskey's not an easy liquid to produce, so it took us a long

00:20time planning, raising the finance, and then constructing

00:24the whiskey room to get to the stage we are

00:28now. So now we're at full production, we can start doing tours,

00:32and the company starts really from this month.

00:36When we designed our tours here, first and foremost we wanted to create an immersive

00:40experience, give people something quite unique, see behind the scenes.

00:44A lot of distilleries, although you can see the grandeur

00:48of the distillery and all the history there, what you can't do is see

00:52behind the scenes and get to draw samples

00:56from the cask, fill your own cask, and so on. It really can be a hands-on

01:00distillery experience, and try to sample

01:04directly from the cask. But we're doing unusual things here, we're using our own

01:08well water, we're using a live yeast, not a dried yeast, and

01:12we are really focused on making the best whiskey

01:16that anyone can make in the UK. And we thought that's a nice thing for people to see.

01:20So we've opened it up, we've designed the building to be accessible

01:24and to be lit and presented in a way that the visitors will

01:28enjoy. And yeah, so far so good. And when they arrive here, they'll

01:32be given a tour of the brewery, they'll understand how we make the beer, and all

01:36our spirits are made from barley and rye and wheat

01:40beers. We make nothing, we mix nothing in here, everything is made

01:44from scratch in this distillery. So they'll see the brewery, they'll see how that works, and then

01:48they'll come through here and they'll see how we distill, and also

01:52most importantly, how we evolve and mature our spirits. So they'll try

01:56a gin and tonic, they'll try a vodka, they'll try some new-make spirit

02:00which is the very early days of what whiskey is, before it's matured.

02:04And they'll see the evolution and the types of flavours that we make here.

02:08So it should be a really interesting experience, both visually

02:12and also from a taste perspective.