Penderyn Distillery – Visitor Centre

Launched in the late 90’s the Penderyn Distillery was the first Whisky distillery located in Wales for over a century. Fast forward a few years and the Penderyn brand is now synonymous with award-winning single malt whiskies and spirits worldwide.

Following huge growth Penderyn has expanded with two new distilleries, the first located in Llandudno North Wales with another planned for Swansea. Not only is the new Llandudno location a distillery but it’s also a Visitor Centre, allowing a peek behind the curtain, educating locals and tourists alike in the process that makes Penderyn Whisky so unique.

We were over the moon to be commissioned in the fitting out of this new visitor centre. It was a joy working closely with ‘Chickadee Creative’ who were responsible for the design and we quickly set to work supplying and installing all AV elements required to ensure the new attraction would engage as well as educate visitors.

Highlights of the project included a massive 65″ interactive book which displays a collection of media in a waterfall layout on endless rotation. While a 150″ looping presentation of beautiful drone footage created using an Ultra short throw laser projector greets visitors at the start of their journey.

A 4 x 55″ screen video wall supplements a personal presentation provided whilst on the guided tour along with a number of other large screens present at intervals that explain the various steps in the distillery process whilst the actual distillery machinery can be seen behind.

A real show-stopper of the project was a bespoke table with 14 individual touchscreens built in, utilised by the master distiller to provide an interactive tasting session for those visitors (or contestants for BBC One’s The Apprentice) on the ‘masterclass’ experience. Using our hugely flexible software Lightbox 3 we created a linear experience that the master distiller takes attendees on, each screen interactive in some way.

© BBC

As part of the interactive masterclass presentation we took various images and provided a level of animation to add some dynamism to the otherwise simple imagery, some examples of which are below, such as these black and white images we re-coloured.

This graphic we animated to better present the distilling process.

Or these images we brought to life with flames!

One of the more unique pieces of kit we supplied is what at first appears to be a simple display cabinet holding Penderyn’s flagship Gold range. However upon further inspection you realise the cabinet operates as an interactive screen, allowing visitors to select a bottle for more information.

Although wrestling with a very tight deadline and the ever present restrictions of COVID the AV install was completed in time for the grand opening. Having been named the north of Wales’s top attraction at the ‘Go North Wales Tourism Awards’, we couldn’t be happier with the results.