The Nolet family makes 2 kinds of spirits, Jenever and Ketel One vodka. Only the vodka is imported into the US. Jenever is Dutch gin, it's very different from London gin--unlike those gins, it doesn't contain coriander and juniper berry. It's awesome. :)
We get a private tour of Scheidam and then of the facility from Pim. He first takes us into a beautiful windmill with a starlight reception area and offers us coffee/tea and shortbread cookies with little windmills on them. Then we enter the distillery...
Here's Pim, above, shown stoking the charcoals for the distillery ketel #1. Then he lets us try...It's VERY hot in there.
The bottling facilities and storage are all on the premises so we catwalk around storage barrels of vodka and gin and through various bottling areas.
Next we enter a tunnel under the canal, built by the company--the Nolet distillery bought all the buildings around it, and across the street. Being the newest building, this is the "smart plant." It looks like a fancy Schotz brewery (of Laverne and Shirley fame). It's all automated: pallets of empty bottles line up on conveyor belts, caps go up, bottles get washed and filled and packaged up neatly. And there's mass warehouse storage space with pallets of empty bottles, gin bottles, vodka bottles, etc.
More than just a factory, the distillery has been the headquarters of the family business for over 300 years, so it also has many beautiful rooms of dark wood walls, stained glass windows, aged wood desks, bottles from years past and historical artifacts from the family and the distilling process. There's also some modern conference rooms.
To wrap up the tour, we end up in a private movie theater, where we watch a 12 minute film on the history of the Nolet family and their distilling process.
After finishing the tour, Pim arranges for a private water taxi for us to take us to the city of Rotterdam. It's a beautiful sunny day for a 15 minute ride across the river.
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