Balvenie Distillery and Castle

While I was first planning this vacation, I wanted to visit the Balvenie Castle ruins, and wasn't sure how many castle ruins Johnny would want to visit.  I noticed that next door to the castle ruins was the Balvenie Distillery and called him and asked him to stop on his way home and get some Balvenie scotch, thinking he could do the distillery tour while I toured the castle ruins if he wasn't interested in touring them with me.  He loved the Balvenie scotch and definitely wanted to tour the distillery. He laughed when I told him my plan and said he wanted to visit the castle as well.  This castle is a Douglas castle, but not my branch of the family.

Unfortunately, we didn't make any reservations for the distillery tour and because it was Whisky Festival Week, Balvenie didn't have any openings in their tour schedule.  All week!  So Johnny bought a bottle of the 21 year old Balvenie scotch in their visitor center.  While we were in the visitor center, the man working in the visitor center had to leave us in the office alone.  When he returned, the first thing he did was check that both of the bottles of the 50 year old scotch (both from the same cask) and worth £29,000 each, were still there. He apologized and said he had to check, and was a little relieved when we both laughed.    :)

Yes, that is snow on the ground!!  That probably helped us have the grounds to ourselves.