Glen Gowrie Distillery
Exclusive Cellar Door tasting tour
We run 5 tasting sessions per day from Wednesday to Sunday at 11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. Bookings are essential!
We have a dedicated disabled parking space right at the Cellar door, as well as a wheelchair, walker and sticks available. Free cordial and games are available for the kids as well as coffee and tea for designated drivers.
Depending on the time of year and what raw ingredients we have on hand, you will have the opportunity to see fermentation of ingredients proceeding. We will happily discuss with you how we convert the raw ingredients, such as potatoes or blueberries, into a form that can be utilised by winemakers yeast into alcohol with the liberation of carbon dioxide; the fermentation process. Depending upon the raw ingredient fermentation can be quiet ‘aromatic’. Sometimes you may find us plunging, pressing or racking but at other times it is quieter and you will be able to see fermentation vats simply sitting and waiting for the mash to clear in preparation for distillation. Depending upon the stage of production we may offer you a taste of the wash prior to distillation. We do not use grain neutral spirit (GNS) as 95% of other distilleries in Australia do!
Our 200L still “Cecil”, does his thing by distilling the wash/mash to produce alcohol. Cecil is a gas fired, water cooled, computer controlled and monitored, agitated, jacketed reflux column still with dephlegmator plates. By many standards Cecil is a small still, but as we make our products in 200L or 400L variable capacity tanks, entirely by hand, this still is quite adequate for our purposes. By doing preparation of ingredients, fermentation and distillation, we have ultimate control over the production of our quality spirit.
We use the maceration technique for production of gins and many of the botanicals we use are sourced from our local area and region from producers we know.
Depending on the tasting you select you will have between 1 and 2 standard drinks. Iced water is supplied.
