Another CIBD study trip, this time a little more local than usual, with a visit to Loch Lomond Distillery in Alexandria.

This place is basically a field and a maltings short of being able to cover every aspect of whisky production on one site.

We were shown around by Stuart Cairns and Cory Martin, who between them know the production and the liquid inside out. That is one of the best things about the CIBD study trips: getting access to the people actually running these places day to day, and the opportunity to ask them all the questions you probably wouldn't get away with on a normal distillery tour.

The scale of Loch Lomond is impressive. The site has capacity for around 5 million litres of malt spirit and 20 million litres of grain spirit a year, but it is the variety of production that really makes it interesting.

With traditional swan-neck pot stills, their distinctive straight-neck stills and continuous distillation all operating on the same site, they can produce a remarkable range of different new make styles. Some of the set-up is genuinely a bit Willy Wonka.

What makes that particularly interesting is that much of the spirit is matured in refill bourbon casks, sometimes with a later finish. It means the character created during fermentation and distillation has nowhere to hide, and gives the blending team an extraordinary range of different spirit styles to work with.

Then there is the cooperage.

Having coopers working on site is increasingly unusual, and Loch Lomond is one of only a handful of Scotch whisky distilleries that still has its own. Watching a cooper at work never really gets old, particularly once the fire starts.

The only downside?

Loch Lomond Distillery isn't normally open for public tours.

Which feels like a bit of a shame, because if ever there was a distillery that needed a proper "Whisky Geek Tour", this is it.