Helsinki Distilling Company – visit the city’s finest distillery

Just below the bar, behind large glass windows, lies the beating heart of The Helsinki Distilling Company. Two gleaming copper stills stand proudly on display – but you don’t have to admire them only from afar. Every Friday and Saturday, the distillery runs open guided tours that anyone can join for a small entry fee. Private tours can also be booked at other times for groups of at least seven people.

On the tour you’ll uncover the secrets of spirit making, such as the fact that whisky is crystal clear when it first comes off the still, and its golden hue appears only after years of ageing in oak barrels.

As you go, you start to grasp the level of dedication The Helsinki Distilling Company brings to its craft. Since day one, quality has been the guiding principle and the goal nothing less than to make the finest spirits in the world.

That quality starts with real, first-rate ingredients: berries used generously and steeped long enough to bring their full flavour into the spirit – not just a token note on the label.

The tour ends with a tasting featuring the distillery’s creations: whisky, gin, another distilled drink such as the award-winning sea-buckthorn spirit, and the Finnish classic Long Drink – a refreshing mix of gin and grapefruit soda, invented for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and beloved ever since. You could even say Finland invented the original boozy lemonade.

The distillery tour costs 15 euros per person. You can add the tasting, which costs 30 euros per person. Private tours: info@tislaamo.fi

A surprising share of The Helsinki Distilling Company’s gin doesn’t go into cocktails at all – it’s used to make the distillery’s own take on Finland’s beloved Long Drink, or lonkero as the locals call it. In Finland, gin and lonkero go hand in hand, so it’s only natural that the classic national favourite has become a proud part of the distillery’s portfolio.

But these are no ordinary long drinks. They’re crafted with the distillery’s own premium gin and blended not with artificial flavourings but with real juice. The Pink Grapefruit long drink, for example, contains 15 percent juice, while many mass-produced versions use little to none. The result is bright, fresh and genuine fruity.

Since October, visitors to the distillery have been able to try flavouring their own long drink in guided workshops. Run for private groups, the sessions pair you up to create your own version under the guidance of a distillery expert – choosing your gin, juice and other flavourings, then tasting and scoring the results together.

It’s a fun, social and hands-on experience that proves the long drink can still surprise you – even after 70 years.

The Helsinki Long Drink Lab costs 25 euros per person and is available for groups of at least six people. Sessions take place on Wednesdays and Saturdays by advance booking. Duration around 1.5 hours.

You’ll learn about whisky making on the distillery tour, but whisky lovers should also check out The Helsinki Distilling Company’s whisky cellar, located in its own space on the edge of the Teurastamo area.

‘It’s a truly exceptional place!’ promises Kai Kilpinen, the company’s co-founder who oversees whisky blending – the art of combining different batches into balanced blended whiskies. Alongside those, HDC also produces single malt.

The cellar is a few minutes’ walk from the distillery. Its walls are built from hefty stone blocks. ‘It was constructed in the 1860s as the ice cellar of the Sörnäinen brewery, where blocks of ice sawn from the sea were stored. The brewery was the first industrial site in Sörkka. Before that, the only thing here was the prison.’

When Kilpinen opens the door, it’s hard not to gasp. The cellar is vast. Rows of whisky barrels rise from floor to ceiling.

‘You won’t find anything this tall and impressive elsewhere,’ he says. ‘In Scotland, even at famous distilleries, the cellars are often low little dens. You’re lucky if you don’t hit your head on the ceiling.’

The magnificent cellar is a visual treat in itself, and on the tour you’ll learn plenty about whisky – especially what fascinates Kilpinen most: its incredible versatility.

‘The possibilities are endless. Whisky can be made from any grain and aged in all kinds of barrels. And then there’s the impact of age, how long you let it mature. All of these have a huge effect on flavour.’

A whisky cellar tour costs 15 euros per person. You can add a whisky tasting for 30 euros per person. Private tours: info@tislaamo.fi

The distillery was born when old friends Kai Kilpinen and Mikko Mykkänen were sharing a glass of good rye whisky one Midsummer night. They recalled hearing that Finnish rye is so high in quality it’s exported to American whisky distilleries.

‘Why couldn’t we make whisky from that rye here in Finland too?’ they wondered. After the idea had matured in their minds for a few years, they decided to act. That’s how The Helsinki Distilling Company came to be.

It takes years to fill the whisky cellar. Today, nearly one hundred thousand litres of top-tier whisky are ageing there. Around a tenth of that volume sits in customers’ own barrels. The distillery allows you to purchase your very own whisky barrel, and they’ve been snapped up by restaurants, groups of friends and private individuals alike.

Customer whiskies mature for four to six years. Once a year, barrel owners are invited to the cellar to taste how their whisky is developing. A personal whisky barrel makes an excellent, slightly grander birthday gift – or a memorable wedding present, for instance. You could bring the guest of honour to learn about whisky-making, then reunite each year to sample your own whisky together and reminisce about the celebration that started it all.

Kilpinen reflects on the beauty of whisky making. What fascinates him is how much time it demands. Even producing new barrels takes at least four years from the moment the oak tree is felled, as the staves need to be dried again and again.

‘There’s nothing fast about whisky. A good whisky needs at least four years of ageing. You can’t speed it up – time itself is a chemical process. It’s comforting that there’s something untouched by AI or digitalisation. Our quarter is 25 years.’

The barrels range from 28 to 64 litres in size, with the price per litre dropping significantly for the larger ones.