Tullamore D.E.W visitor centre

Award-winning Glasgow based design team Surface-ID, has created a £2 million design-led visitor attraction which, for the first time, translates the whiskey making process into an immersive visitor experience.

The unique attraction is located at the Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre in County Offaly in Ireland and provides a “home” for the Tullamore D.E.W. brand.

The Centre opened in September and visitors get an interactive experience which uses a variety of installations and visual and sensory effects to excite the visitors’ senses and immerses them in each stage of the whiskey making process from malting to maturation.

The Centre also boasts the world’s best stocked whiskey bar with over 1,800 bottles displayed in a spectacular three storey gantry, and dedicates an entire floor to nosing and tasting.

William Grant & Sons, who own The Tullamore brand, awarded the contract following a five way pitch which saw Surface-ID fight off international competition to win the design contract. The company has previously worked for William Grant &Sons.

Spread over four floors of the original bonded warehouse, the walk through experience immerses the visitor in the process where they enter and experience each aspect of the whiskey making process, from walking through a field of oversized barley, travelling up a giant washback, crossing the maltings floor infused with hot air, scents and glowing embers.  Three life size replica stills “float” over, providing a focal point for the tour, before exiting via a corridor profiled as a giant Tullamore D.E.W. bottle.

The design also encompasses a number of up-cycled pieces such as pendant lights fashioned from Tullamore bottles and tables and stools formed from metal hoops which had originally encircled whiskey barrels, and which now depict facts and phrases as you drink.