While on a shortish break to Sweden I used the chance to visit the Mackmyra Svensk Whisky destillery. While not actually having tried the Whisky yet, I fancied having a look at the place. While the English website doesn’t offer much of a clue regarding visiting times, but a quick google.translate helped me to find what I was looking for. I guess I found the reason for this: the tour is only available in Swedish. But as the staff speak English, all further questions I had where answered. The destillery itself is near the town of Gävle about two hours north of Stockholm.
The tour starts with history of Mackmyra and general introduction to whiskymaking. Special note here is that when peating their malt they also add juniper berries and if you want to you can actually buy a cask right from the start and watch it mature over the years. Then it was off to the actual production areas. Quite interesting for me was actually having to put on hairnet, shoecovers and a labcoat. They do mill their malt directly on site and have one steel mash tun and I think I counted four washbacks. The next room situates the wash still and the main still. One thing you won’t find here is a spirit safe. I was told that the Swedish government gets its share the moment the Whisky is botteled – as opposed to the Scots, who get taxed by Her Majesty the moment the spirit is filled into the barrel. After that the tour’s over and finishes without a tasting. I think it is possible to have a tasting for about 50 Krones, but I had to miss out at that point due to arriving by car.
