Hang On Shoopie: Distilleries and Dogs

Today's first stop was the home of the smallest distillery in Scotland. Edradour Distillery is the last HANDMADE single malt whisky from a farm left in the country.

This is the original distilling building from 1824. Although it recently had some updates, the entire process is done by hand. The company only had approximately 30 employees, 12 of which are tour guides.

Once the "wort" a mix of the water and mash is mixed it is at 180 degrees and must be bought down to about 60 in order for the yeast to be added. This distillery still uses a non-electric mode of cooling. This refrigeration unit puts the "wort" through and cools it with use of only local stream water.

Then it is left to ferment in these large barrels which are made from Oregon pine.

Finally it is distilled twice through these small stills. These are the only two stills used by the company.

They then put the product into barrels for at least 10 years. However, there is one barrel in the warehouse that dates back to 1969.

This is the cool, clean, and peaceful water used in their whisky. Our tour guide Ian was fantastic. He wanted me to be sure to understand that Scotch Whisky should NEVER have 3 things added to it: ice, water, or Coke!

Our other stop for the day took us into the Highlands of Scotland, which meant so many sheep on the distant hillsides as we traveled. Our destination was a sheepdog demonstration. It was absolutely amazing. Neal, the head shepherd told us that the farm has over 3,000 sheep on it.

The sheep are sent out into the hills and can roam up to 12 miles away. They are brought in 4 times a year for some aspect be it sheering or bathing. They use 35 dogs and 12 men to bring the sheep in. You can see some of the dogs above that were used in the demonstration. They are Scottish Sheepdogs. They all know their separate jobs and will respond to their own individual commands. There are different whistles used for each command. He said the biggest thing is to make sure your dogs will "come back" because if they don't then you have a real problem! We thought that was funny!

They would lay down and wait until their signal and job was needed. It was pretty amazing.

Then this little guy came out of nowhere. It was his "first day" ever trying to herd sheep. It was pretty amazing that he knew WHAT he was supposed to do, he just didn't know HOW to go about it properly. Like Neil said he was erratic. The other dogs just lay down and waited until the situation was WAY out of control and then came in to help. This puppy spent 10 minutes really trying to herd those sheep. For his first time he did a good job. Neil said he is going to be good once he gets trained.