It's like Hershey Chocolate World...for adults

I apologize to people that have been asking for more frequent updates (Brendan) but I seem to be rather bad at keeping track seeing as it's been almost a week. I promise if you keep annoying me about it, I will update more often. Or at least try to.

Anyways, this past weekend was packed with quite the adventures, the first being a visit to the old Jameson distillery. May I first clarify that I am indeed of legal drinking age here in Ireland (it's 18) for anyone who didn't know. The distillery is actually very close to Cork so a group of us decided it would be a good day trip. We had been told that there was a free bus that went there so of course us being poor college students, we were excited out of our minds about anything free. Unfortunately, it stopped running in September, but it was still pretty cheap just to get the regular bus out there.

When we first arrived it smelled strongly of baking bread so we just assumed it was the bakery next to the bus stop. As we strolled down the street towards the distillery:

 we realized that the smell was getting stronger which confused us at first. Then a light bulb went off in someone's head that they make whiskey with barley. It was actually like Hershey Park, but instead of the whole town smelling like chocolate, it smelled like bread.

We were total tourists as we were walking up the street snapping pictures. We even were blocking traffic at one point because we were trying to get that perfect angle for a picture...which happened to achieved by standing in the middle of the road.

There was also this large copper thing standing outside the entrance:

and it actually kinda looks like it could be someone's home. We later found out what it really was (a still) but I still like to imagine a leprechaun lives inside or something.

One of the first things I noticed is that EVERYTHING has Jameson written somewhere on it. I even noticed later on that our tour guide's NorthFace had Jameson on it. My favorite was the chandelier made out of Jameson bottles:

which is reminiscent of the chandeliers at the Double Wide Grill in Pittsburgh for yinz that know it.

We began our tour with a cheesy 10 minute film and then began walking around. I had thought it would be mostly indoors but it's actually such a huge place, that we were outside a lots hopping from building to building. We also got an in depth explanation of how whiskey is made which was really interesting. For me at least. My favorite was when we got to to the malting stage and they had a pair of these beauts:

which, lezbehonest, I totes bought as my shoes for going out that night. But no, they're not actually disco shoes from the 70's and they're not from Baby Spice's wardrobe either. They were to prevent the workers' feet from burning. Much less interesting in my humble opinion.

So to continue the Hershey similarities, they even had real-fake equipment mixing real-fake barley mash!

They also had creepy worker mannequins hiding in strange places:

which I don't think would go over too well at Hershey.

After that we got a pretty good view of the actually working distillery which is still in the area. It's also the only place that Jameson is made. Once it's put in barrels  those can be stored and bottled elsewhere but this is the one and only place where it's made.

Not quite as rustic looking as what we were touring, but it made the town smell good so I could care less. Towards the end we got to see real whiskey in barrels that they had put a clear plate over so you could see the colors as it aged. It made for a pretty cool picture:

It was also at this point that our tour guide brought up the words "whiskey tasting" and some of us more than others jumped to be volunteers for it. We also got a "free" drink if we were of age (which may I stress again that I AM LEGAL IN IRELAND). Free simple meaning it's included with our ticket price already. The tasting was actually really cool.

Our tour guide told us about each type and what to taste for when we drank it. And just in case we forgot in the short time it took for us to pick up the samples, it was written on the place mats too. We had scotch whiskey (Johnny Walker), Jameson (duh), and American whiskey (Jack Daniels). It was cool because you could actually taste the difference. How bout that huh? Different whiskeys taste different. Who would've thought.

After that we walked around the town a bit and grabbed some lunch and whiffed in as much of that lovely barley smell as possibly. It was well worth a day trip if anyone ever gets to this neck of the woods!