This New London School Will Teach You How to Distill and Blend Your Own Whisky
Whiskey might be really easy to drink, but distilling it isn’t quite as simple. But now you can learn the basics of how to distill and blend whiskey and other spirits at the new London Bridge Distillery School the next time you visit the Big Smoke.
This new Distilling School is part of the Whisky Exchange, an online spirits retailer founded in 1999 that is known for stocking everything from bottles of Jack Daniel’s to rare expressions from The Macallan. Pernod Ricard acquired the company in 2021, so there’s certainly some capital behind it for this undertaking. The school is located beneath the physical location of the Whisky Exchange, and as of July 12 you can book a few different experiences based on the type of spirit you’re interested in.
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The London Bridge Distillery School has 16 micro pot stills and one larger 50-liter still, but the only spirit that you can actually distill yourself is gin—which makes sense, given that it requires just neutral grain spirit and botanicals, and doesn’t need to be put into barrels and matured. Guests who book this experience will learn how to distill their own personal gin using one of the micro stills, and can choose from 24 different botanicals to flavor the spirit just how they like it. As far as whiskey and rum, these are really blending exercises. You can create your own custom whisky blend using liquid aged in different cask types. Similarly for rum, you can select pot and column distilled rums from the Caribbean and South America to create a custom bottling.
The spirits you actually get to take home are sample sized 50-cl minis, but your recipe will be kept on file at the school if you want to order more. Prices for the whiskey and gin experiences start at £120 ($154), and £95 ($122) for rum. Visit the website to book now—it sure sounds like a lot more fun than visiting Big Ben or the London Eye.
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