After a quick train ride to Egna-Termeno station, I walked up through the Alpine vineyards and orchards to Brennerei Psenner. This is one of several whisky makers in South Tyrol (which make this the hotbed for Italian whisky). As if to illustrate the point, Psenner is one of the only distilleries from which I can also see the door of an entirely separate distillery: Roner.
Strada Ferrata means ‘railway’, and I needed a fair few of those to get here. The last one went from Milano Centrale to Seregno, a town forming part of the greater Milan suburbs. The name actually comes from an adjoining brewery, but the head distiller Marco tells me that it not only sounds good - the name implies a path to follow.
It's here! In April, I wrote about an announcement by new Welsh distillers In the Welsh Wind. Their first whisky release is here, a 3 year old palo cortado release. You can see more about the distillery here, but now I can actually show you what the new whisky looks and tastes like!
Little did I know the day I was about to have, rocking up to the little station of Mauer-Ohling in Austria. I walked up the hill to see Distillerie Farthofer , a distillery I first heard of over a year ago. Making whiskey from barley, oats, emmer, aged in casks used for mostello, a pear-based drink they invented themselves?! I had to see this!
In some ways, this distillery is the one which germinated the idea of EuroWhisky in my head back in 2017!
Note: this blog was published on 1st May, the Day of Austrian Whisky
Where is IWW? What's their deal?
Henstone is not the biggest name in English whiskey but I'm very glad I got to visit! In October last year, I was lucky enough to drive up there with my mother. We were met by Henry, son of the distillery's owner . Henstone was started in 2016 by a local family in Oswestry , and is named after the family home.
In October last year, I took a combo of trains and buses to reach Distillerie Radermacher in Belgium's oft-overlooked eastern corner. You see, Belgium isn't only split north/south along Flemish/Walloon lines. Besides Brussels, Flanders, and Wallonia, Belgium has a tiny fourth region : German-speaking Wallonia , centered on the town of Eupen.
Hot on the heels of the Ghent Whiskey Festival 2023, I went to visit Filliers from the beautiful city of Ghent. While I ended up taking a bus, it's especially easy to take a 4 minute train to Deinze and then walk the 2km to the distillery.
This was my first distillery visit carried out entirely in French! That does mean I didn’t take as many notes - there were times I didn’t understand or was too busy focusing on the next sentence to write down what I heard. This blog is less than half the length of my last, but I hope you still enjoy it!
After visiting Domaine des Hautes Glaces and Marseille, I took a morning train to see Distillerie des Camisards. After a quick stop in Nîmes, I took the tiny train below to Grande Combe la Pise. It's a beautiful area, just sitting at the edge of the hilly Cévennes. The distillery name comes from the Camisards, a set of Occitan-speaking Huguenots here in the Cévennes who rebelled against French royal authority in the early 18th century.
