Edinburgh: Holyrood Distillery Whisky and Gin Tour & Tasting

I participated in the guided tour of the Holyrood Distillery, dedicated to the production of whisky and gin. The experience was overall nice and interesting, especially for those who want to learn more about some aspects of production and end the tour with a small tasting. Personally, having already visited several distilleries in Ireland, I had rather high expectations and this experience seemed simpler to me compared to other visits of the same kind. The guide was helpful, even though I found the explanations quite fast, and I would have appreciated some more in-depth information. The final tasting is also rather limited. Overall, I therefore give an average rating: it wasn't a negative experience, but not one of the visits I will remember most from the trip either. I recommend it especially to whisky and gin enthusiasts or to those who have never visited a distillery before and want to have an experience of this type in the center of Edinburgh. Decent experience, especially for enthusiasts.

Great tour, we really appreciated hearing the history of scotch whiskey, and we were surprised to here as much on their Gin.

We enjoyed our tour guided by Guy with his enthousiastic en explenations an comments.

I went on the Distillery After Hours Tour and had an absolutely fantastic time from start to finish. It was well organised, relaxed, and struck the perfect balance between being entertaining and informative. Our guide, Courtney, was outstanding. She was warm, friendly, funny, courteous, and incredibly knowledgeable, delivering the tour with genuine enthusiasm and plenty of humour. She made everyone feel welcome and was happy to answer questions throughout, making the experience feel personal rather than scripted. My companion and I thoroughly enjoyed sampling the different spirits and learning about how they’re made. The tasting was generous and varied, and the highlight for us was definitely getting the chance to mix our own cocktail. It was a brilliant hands-on activity that added a really fun element to the evening. One thing I particularly appreciated was that there was absolutely no hard sell at the end. You were free to browse the shop without any pressure to buy anything, which made the whole experience even more enjoyable. A huge thank you to Courtney for making the evening so memorable. She is a real credit to the distillery, and thanks to her, we left having learned something new, shared plenty of laughs, and had a genuinely wonderful time. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this tour to anyone looking for a fun and enjoyable experience.

A friendly small distillery. The staff were knowledgeable and Cillian was a wonderful tour guide.

Aoife was a fantastic tour host. The entire operation is very cool. I love the concept and vibe. They were very accommodating for mobility challenges and kids in our group. 😁

Great and educational, good guide. Good Gin and Whiskey

We were looking for some whisky tour and found this one while we had our stay in Edinburgh. I'd start by saying that the staff is really awesome, prepared, and ready to assist you in any way they can. We choose the spooky tour 👻 Courtney, our tour guide, made the tour a pleasure, and her expertise made our experience buttery smooth. As for the "spooky" part, I was expecting more atmosphere and specific effects, but that's a subjective expectation maybe. Note: if your only purpose is to find pretty long aged whiskeys this is NOT the place for you. They are a really young distillery (7 years at the time of writing), so they have been coming up with quite a bit of creativity to stand up in the crowd, like playing around with various yeasts, malt, barley and whatever (I'm not an expert btw), you get the point. They also make their own Gin of course, since it does not require any aging and other stuff worth trying in my opinion.

Fun and informative. Really enjoyed the cocktail at the beginning.

Fantastic tour! Aoife was a brilliant tour guide, entertaining and informative. Great experience, thoroughly recommended.