Spring 2025 Banquet

Glow with the flow

  • Roddy Martine
  • January 13 2025

SWE_Orgins barley The Scotch Whisky Experience

Neil Braidwood returns to the Scotch Whisky Experience in Edinburgh and finds that a lot has changed since his last visit

For more than 35 years the Scotch Whisky Experience (SWE) on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile has been educating a global audience on the pleasures of Scotch Whisky. The Victorian building was a former school, so perhaps it’s no accident that the SWE is so good at teaching the secrets of Scotch.

The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre, as it was originally known, was the brainchild of Alistair McIntosh, who in the 1980s was working at the William Muir bottling plant in Leith. This job brought him into contact with many distillery owners. His vision was to bring these businesses together in a consortium which would jointly finance a visitor centre that explained the process of making whisky in layman’s terms, and perhaps also introduce newcomers to the world of whisky… and the rest, as they say, is history.

When the doors opened in May 1988, the central attraction was a barrel ride (albeit a sedate one) through the history of Scotch– and it became an instant hit – achieving five-star visitor attraction status. The ride moved downstairs in 2009 to tell the story of how whisky was made.

Fast forward 35 years and the SWE has grown ever more sophisticated in its telling of the whisky story. Last November, three new immersive areas were opened at the attraction with a cost of £3.5million.

“We had been planning the upgrade to the visitor experience since 2019,” says Julie Trevisan Hunter, the SWE’s Marketing Director and Master of the Quaich. “But then Covid hit and everything changed. We had to close during lockdown and it was an awful time. When the restrictions were lifted, we just thought we should go for it.”

The team at the SWE appointed ‘attraction architects’ Hatto and Partners, headed up by Craig Hatto. The company has worked with the Science Museum and Kew Gardens to bring their stories to life, and this new element of the Scotch Whisky story is a triumph.

Once you have chosen and paid for your ticket (silver, gold or platinum – more on that later), you and the rest of the group are led into the first of the three new spaces – Origins. You find yourself completely surrounded by the sounds of Scotland – the wind… and the rain. This is what makes Scotland so unique, our guide explains: “Today’s rain is tomorrow’s whisky.” The images, too, are all around us – deer strolling on the hillside and the barley swaying in the breeze. Many visitors may not have seen this side of Scotland – and it’s a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of The Royal Mile just outside the door.

We are given some time to take this all in before moving through to the next immersive zone – The Art of Whisky Making. This is the science bit, made all the more fascinating with the help of a kinetic sculpture. Think floating spheres forming different shapes as the audio visual explains the whisky-making process. Kinetic sculptures have never been used in a visitor attraction in this way – they are more often found in upmarket shopping malls or at lavish product launches.

The spheres are suspended on almost invisible wires and each one is computer controlled so that they can move independently or all together. Lighting is also used to incredible effect, making the spheres look red and hot one minute or golden and sleek the next. Movements can go from jerky to fluid – depending on what part of the story we are experiencing. The whole effect is quite mesmerising and beautiful.

Next, we move to a huge cylindrical room – giving the feeling we are actually inside a wooden cask. This is Maturation. The images on the wall make us feel we are being submerged in spirit – and this, of course, is when whisky becomes whisky. Our guide explains that the spirit must be in a barrel for a minimum of three years to achieve Scotch Whisky status. Longer, and the better the whisky becomes. It’s an ingenious way to tell this part of the story and one which was not lost on Master Blender Richard Paterson OBE when he visited last year. “The maturation process is highly complex but this portrays it perfectly,” he said.

The tour doesn’t end here though – we still had the pleasures of a scratch and sniff aroma card, showing how whisky differs across Scotland. We learn about the differences between single malts and blends with the help of some magical ‘holodram’ bottles. Then, of course, we can choose a whisky to try, sampling it in the stupendous surroundings of the Diageo Claive Vidiz room, named for the obsessive whisky collector and Keeper of the Quaich.

A silver ticket gets you all of the above – including the dram. Upgrade to a gold ticket and once the tour is over, you can enjoy four more contrasting drams in the adjacent bar. Choose platinum and your tour is in the early evening and includes a tutored nosing and tasting of four single malts and one deluxe blend.

The beauty of the SWE is that it caters for newbies and experts alike in perfect surroundings in the heart of the capital city. We should leave the last word, however, to the Chair of the SWE and Master of the Quaich Malcolm Leask: “This newest addition to Edinburgh’s tourist attractions continues our mission of showcasing Scotland’s national drink in a very contemporary, modern way.”

 

For more, visit www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk

 

This article first appeared in the summer 2024 issue of The Keeper

 

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