In a rare confluence of events, Hubby and I both had free time, energy, felt good, wanted to go out, AND had a sunny, dry day. We could not pass up this opportunity to go out and do something fun. We haven't been out exploring Dublin much, not like when we first moved here, so we decided to go check something off of our to-visit list. Hubby has been drinking Teeling whiskey for a while, but we didn't know about this new local distiller until we saw a TV show about it. The owners wanted to bring a distillery back to Dublin, there hasn't been one here in over 100 years. Unlike the other tours we have done of the Guinness Brewhouse and Jameson Distillery, this is actually a working distillery. The other two were at one point a working distillery, but are now just a glorified museum. This one did have a little museum like section at the very beginning, where you waited for your tour to begin. While we were waiting there I noticed that something was off with the photos they had hanging, two of them seemed to be swapped. So you know I went and said something about it, then helped the guy swap them around. So I come to go on a tour, and first thing I do is re-arrange their gallery!
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| We learned that the three copper stills are each for a different stage of distilling, not for doing three batches at once. |
The first thing I noticed was the smell. At the Jameson distillery, they just made it smell like malted barley, which is a nice smell. Because they were actually doing the work here, we smelled the fruits of their labor, which is a lot of fermenting grains, which doesn't smell so nice. It wasn't too bad though, hubby thought it just smelled like whiskey. This distillery works at least 6 days a week, and was supposed to be working on the day we came, but the distiller called in sick! Oh well, it was probably easier to hear the tour guide this way anyway. Some of the info we already knew from the Jameson tour, but this guy talked a LOT about the "tax man." He said one of the reasons those stills are so wide is because they are taxed on how high the stills are, but not on how wide. The glass and bronze box pictured below with the three bowls in it is also for the tax man's benefit. Even the guys with the fun jobs have to worry about boring bureaucratic lame stuff too.
To finish up the tour, we got to taste some of the whiskey. This place is unique in that it has different tickets available; they are all for the same tour, but get you different tastings at the end. We had just the basic ticket, which got us one shot of whiskey and one whiskey cocktail. I didn't like the cocktail but hubby did, and we both loved the plain whiskey. I'd had it at home, but appreciated it much more after the description he gave us and tasting it in the manner he described (not just throwing it in your mouth). That being said, I was totally jealous after I saw all the glasses the other people had and wished we had sprung for the pricier tickets. Next time....
I also loved the bar area, it was modern but still warm and cozy, and I thought it would make a great place for a party.
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| This bar was very quirky, it just looked like a bunch of planks of wood thrown down with a slab of stone on top! Somehow it works, though. |
We were surprised to run into these bottle yourself stations in the small gift shop. I've seen bottle your own olive oil or vinegar places, but never bottle your own booze!
We also enjoyed seeing all the things they made out of old whiskey barrels that had reached the end of their life. They had tables and bottle holders, which I've seen before, but they also made lots of Christmas decorations, including a few full trees.
The tour was a bit quicker than we expected, so we weren't ready to head home just yet, and decided to try out another place hubby had heard of a month ago, but we never managed to get to.
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| This is the next place we went to, do you see the bar here? |
He read about a pop-up bar that was Christmas themed, even playing Christmas music the whole time. Since Christmas is only a few days away it was now or never, so we headed over even though we knew it wasn't quite time to open yet. He explained to me that the trick with these pop-up bars is that they they are only temporary, and they don't have signage when they are not open for business, and don't advertise or even make it easy to find, I guess it makes it cooler. We only had an idea where it was because of what he had read earlier, and the guy standing around out front that seemed to be a security guy. Still, we stood a few doors down and just kept peeking over, it wasn't like a normal place you could line up at, we weren't even positive we had the right spot. Did you find it in the picture above? Here, let me show you:
Can you blame us for thinking we may not have the right spot? When they were finally ready to open we heard some music, they removed the red gate, and light was pouring out of the door. That was it, it wasn't even worth taking a picture of. The inside was picture worthy though! The bar was actually downstairs, this door just opened onto a staircase that led down, but they had a "Santa's Grotto" sign handing there, and some impressive Santa and elves paintings on the stairway wall.
Once we got downstairs we found the small bar that was very cozy, had scented candles burning, Christmas decorations everywhere, and even Christmas Crackers on all the tables. If you don't know what Christmas Crackers are, look at last year's post. We were the only people in there, having rushed the doors as soon as they opened, and first thing the barman gave us some Crackers to pull, this was hubby's first one! He didn't even know that there were things to dig out of the tube, he though that the bit that fell out was all there was, but I knew there was a crown and a joke in there. I made him wear his paper crown for a while, but it didn't last the whole time. At least he was a good sport for a while :)
At this point in the year, the barman said they were so tired of the normal Christmas songs, so were looking for all kinds of alternative versions. I was a little disappointed in that, but hubby was excited to tell them about the Bad Religion Christmas album, and they played the whole thing through for us. We were, after all, the only customers for a little while, and we were having a lot of fun with the guys as they continued to get set up. One of those things was making the mulled wine, which took them FOREVER and started to become quite a joke. Once it was finally done the first glass he served had the spice bag still in it! Once we finally got some mulled wine we headed out, having enjoyed our first Dublin Fun Day in quite a while.
