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. 

Last September, I was incredibly fortunate to visit the Domaine des Hautes Glaces in the mountains above Grenoble. Getting a lift from Geraldine (the distillery's Commercial and Marketing Director), I was stunned by the scenery on the way there. This area, the Trièves , is a 900m high plateau named for three ways through the mountains - south toward Marseille, north toward Lyon, and east towards Switzerland. 

This was a really significant visit for me personally. It was a wet day in Lannion when I rocked up on a train from Rennes. Together with Christophe of the Rennes Whiskey Club and More Drams, Less Drama , I went somewhere I had first tried to go in 2017: Warenghem Distillery, the home of Armorik whisky.

On a beautifully boiling-hot August day, I arrived in the town of Kappelrodeck to visit Scheibel. Since trying their whisky for the first time in Hamburg and being blown away by it back in January (what feels like years ago), I had to come and see this distillery when I got the chance.

Taking a morning train from Frankfurt, I got off at a small stop called Kleinheubach. From there, it's a quick bus transfer up into a small valley, to the quiet town of Rüdenau . Any doubts about going the right way disappeared as the bus passed along the length of the distillery, 'St Kilians' standing out against the whitewashed walls in large black letters .