Lakes Distillery 2016

The Lakes Distillery is situated in North West England. It lies in the Lake District National Park, in which the surroundings are more than beautiful! The water source is the river Derwent which is swirling through the Lakes District with trees on the side almost all the way. That is probably where it derives its name from, as Derwent literally means ‘river of oak’.

We arrived at the distillery, which commenced production in 2014, and when I was finished admiring all the scenery, we went to the visitor center. The building fits perfect with all the beautiful nature. It is fantastic restored and a very charming place. We purchased a standard tour ticket and were pointed to the courtyard where the tour would start.

Our tour guide was named Simon and he started with a quick history lesson about how they got started and about the restoration of the facility. Then we were guided into the buildings where we were asked, not only not to take pictures, but also to turn off our cellphones. This is so ridiculous and my eyes twitch every time another tour guide tries to explain how dangerous it is taking pictures inside a distillery… Please stop being retards and let the people, that are paying money to visit you, take some pictures!!

When we got inside, we saw a beautiful video of the river Derwent, the Lakes District and the distillery. A nice touch to start the tour. After that, they had made a screen where the ghost of Lanty Slee appeared. Lanty Slee was and old bootlegger that made moonshine in the area in the 17th century. After he talked about how he did things back in the days, we went to the production.

All of the production is located in the same room, and it is mostly all steel and computerised. As much charm as the place has, as little charm does the production have. After going through the production we were taken to their warehouse on site, which is a very small one. They have some other warehouses in Cockermouth near by. They use Oloroso sherry and bourbon casks. I noticed some Jim Beam, Heaven Hill and buffalo Trace casks, to name a few.

A couple of features that is special for Lakes DIstillery, which is worth mentioning:

- They have two different condensers. One in copper and one in steel. I can’t quite figure out the idea with the steel one, but they haven’t started using it yet so… It might be fun to see what that will bring in the future.

- There is a small pot still called “Chemmy” which is used to distill their Vodka and Gin.

After the tour we went back to the visitor center, were we had the chance to taste a blended whisky they make, and their own Gin and Vodka. The whisky doesn’t have anything to do with the whisky produced at Lakes Distillery and wasn’t very exciting. The Vodka was kind of plain, but the Gin really impressed me. Overall, I had some different impressions of the distillery. Impressive location, impressive buildings, but boring and charmless production. I am looking forward to taste their whisky in the future though. I will rate this tour 4/10.