Do you want to find out more about the Speyside Cooperage Tours in Scotland? If you are visiting the Highlands, Speyside Cooperage is a popular tourist destination.
The UK's only working Cooperage
Cairngorms Holiday Cottages is an STB five-star, award-winning exhibition that will whisk you on a journey that displays the lifecycle of each cask we make. The experience allows you to witness all of our Coopers hard at work, using traditional equipment, tools and methods.
The tours offer the chance to learn all about our casks, what they are used for and allow you to see the ancient craft of barrel-making in the rawest, most authentic form.
We use oak wood as it is the best wood for wine and spirit cask production; oak wood is excellent for this use as it allows the spirits to breathe without tarnishing the scents or flavours and prevents seepage.
Each year our skilled and qualified professionals repair and made over 100,000 casks, hogsheads, puncheons, barrels and butts for us to use and sell all over the country.
We offer numerous tours, including The Master Cooper Tour, which is the last tour and is exclusive to the whisky festival. As a result, our customers can enjoy and savour the sights, sounds and smells of our working Cooperage and the unique opportunity that comes with wandering around the site.
Cooperage Tours
Our knowledgeable, qualified professional guides accompany all of our customers and visitors through the exhibitions starting with our Classic Cooperage Tour.
It's incredibly informative, educational and offers a 4D cinematic presentation, both audio and visual, to adhere to all the senses. All of which is followed by an excellent graphic viewing gallery where you can be the first-hand witness to our Coopers at work making the casks with thorough explanations from our guides.
Alongside the Classic tour, we offer a VIP tour for those who want a different in-depth experience. For the VIP tour, we bring in an experienced former Cooper to guide you around and share their involvement in the industry with our customers.
The VIP tour offers our visitors the exciting chance to try their hand at building a small barrel on site.
After such, our customers will be escorted down to the floor and shop to view the Coopers with budding apprentices up close. You'll see them repairing casks at incredible speeds, and it is a fantastic chance for photo opportunities, especially when witnessing the firing and charring of the barrels.
History of Speyside Cooperage Visitor Centre
We are the largest independent, working Cooperage visitor centre in the UK, and the Taylor family founded our brand in 1947.
We also have various branches of Speyside over the Alloa, Ohio and Kentucky, and of course, our home at Dufftown Road Craigellachie, Banffshire Scotland ab38 9rs surrounded by iconic Speyside distilleries.
In the early '90s our company had overgrown its premises in the village Craigellachie Banffshire Scotland ab38 9rs, and we have been able to relocate in the year 1991.
We opened the Speyside Cooperage visitor attraction centre in the later year that allows our customers the rare experience of viewing such an ancient craft first-hand.
In 2008, the Speyside Cooperage Visitor Attraction Centre, Craigellachie Moray Malt Whiskey Trail, became a part of a wide range of Cooperages and Stave Mills when Tonnellerie Francois Freres Group took over the business.
The Cooperage and The Whiskey Trail
Our award-winning, five-star Speyside Cooperage Acorn to Cask icons exhibition and single malt whiskey trail allows our visitors to go on a thorough journey of the whole process and works that go into the casks and our ancient craft and an interesting viewing gallery.
In addition, the trip offers the chance to see our Coopers and apprentices work with their traditional methods and tools to gape at and learn from. The site hosts an enormous gift shop full to the brim of great whiskey and whiskey related gifts.
The art of the cooper takes many years to master. However, our Cairngorms Holiday Cottages coopers of Speyside may build and repair casks worldwide using all-natural products and materials. They don't use a single drop of glue nor nails during the process as it is highly traditional.
Visitors wandering the Cooperage and malt whiskey trail course can watch scenes of fired casks after arriving to char the interior. Many casks are often of an ex-port, sherry, peated or bourbon barrel, giving the whiskey a unique flavour.
Our business is the height of whiskey highlands and islands tourism. It is a registered tourism 2018 awards winner in Scotland, with an overwhelming 478 reviews of Dufftown Road and our Five-Star Speyside Cooperage Centre from several Tripadvisor travellers in November 2020.
Please call or email Speyside Cooperage Tours for complete details or any cooperate Visitor Centre enquiries.
They open gift shop from 9.00-4.15. The duration of our tours is usually 45 minutes, and the overall costs of our classic tour are about £4.00 per person.
The Speyside Cooperage Tours is one of the popular attractions in the Speyside area. If you are planning a holiday or short stay in Speyside, we have some great luxury cottages available. For Speyside accommodation follow the link below.