From some of Czechia’s most historic distilling sites to one of its newest. Radlík is only 40 minutes outside Prague, and it's a lovely journey on a late August day. Before hosting a tasting at the Whiskeria in the evening, I got to sample some of Czechia’s great public transport. A fast metro to Budějovická, where city buses fire you right out into the countryside.
As soon as I finished visiting R. Jelinek in the morning, it was off to Olomouc on the train. Leaving the edge of the Carpathians, I headed for this historic Moravian city to see a much smaller Czech distillery: TOSH. A few trains, trams, and buses later, I was standing in Těšetice, the true genesis / ground zero of Czech whisky.
As soon as I finished my last distillery visit in Austria, I headed straight off to Czechia on the train. By 10pm, I managed to make it to the small town of Vizovice in eastern Moravia. A town of only 5,000 inhabitants, it’s also home to one whisky distillery, and it might be the single most important one in Czechia: Rudolf Jelínek.
I’d had a very disrupted start to my Czechia trip… which started with a brief interlude in Austria. Missing my planned night train, I had to take a series of buses and trains overnight, which did have the silver lining of letting me watch the sunrise between Munich and the Danube. All that left me standing at Linz Hauptbahnhof, where I was met by Jasmin Haider pulling up in her Tesla.
You’ve likely seen me talk a lot about Teerenpeli, and plenty of their bottles go through EuroWhisky tastings / the webshop. Back in July of this year, I finally got to visit as the last point on my summer trip through the Nordics. Here’s what it was like to visit one of the first modern European whisky distilleries…
I had been tempted to incorporate a visit to Basque Moonshiners into my visit to the Basque Country. For context, I had a limited time between when I could travel from the Netherlands, and when I had to go to Barcelona for a long-planned whisky tasting at the Whiskeria. I had already planned to visit Destilerias Acha and Siderit, and I sadly didn’t have time for this distillery in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
After coming back to Stockholm from High Coast, I took the MS Cinderella ferry over to Helsinki. Even though my visit to Helsinki Distilling Company wasn’t happening for another day yet, I got a little preview in the tax-free shop onboard…
In late June, just after Midsummer, I took the train from Lund up to Kramfors/Nyland for the High Coast distillery festival. Running for a weekend every year, the event parallels my trip last year to Kyrö Distillery in Finland for much the same thing! There were lupins blooming everywhere as I took the bus and then a taxi en route to the event. There are buses running from larger towns, for future reference, just like they were at Kyrö.
Back in June, I was lucky enough to get a day en route to a distillery - in fact, to my second distillery of the day. Having just visited Thornaes in the morning, I then got a series of trains, ferries, and even a trolleybus to Ven (‘veen’), a small island in the Øresund. This was my first time visiting a Swedish distillery - in fact, my first time visiting Sweden at all! It was encouraging to see ads for the distillery even on the ferry over from Landskrona…
Stepping off the train at Kagerup, you’d forget you just left central Copenhagen on a local train. The short walk to the distillery is bucolic, with thatched roofs, old sawmills, and horses in the fields. Honestly, I can recommend a visit to the area even if you're not here for the distillery (for some reason...).
Each International Women's Day, I highlight women who work with whiskey on social media, naming and celebrating those I've interacted with over the past year. You'll see more from me about women making whiskey in the next issue of Whiskey Magazine , but for now I'd like to add to this year's IWD by exploring something else. Most of this blog existed as a draft written in 2023 - now, with a little re-work, I'm putting it up here because I am confident that it is still relevant and could make some important points.
Like me, you may have seen a growing number of AI-generated images in the whiskey world recently. I've also noticed posters, tasting sheets, and other whisky-related info coming from sources like Chat GPT. Many people are open about using AI this way. There are even Instagram accounts just dedicated to generating whisky-related “art”.
