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<\/div>\nThe lighting is low, the walls are dark wood, the back bar glows with premium bottles. You could be in London<\/a>, New York<\/a> or Tokyo<\/a>. But then you notice that very few people are wearing much at all, even though there is snow on the ground outside. That\u2019s because around the back of this bar is a fully-functioning sauna.<\/p>\n This is the Kyr\u00f6 Sauna Bar<\/a>, a pop-up in central Helsinki, now in its second year, and it is exactly what it sounds like. A bar. With a sauna. It tells you almost everything you need to know about Kyr\u00f6, the Finnish rye whisky<\/a> distillery behind it. Serious about quality and completely unserious about convention.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone was ever going to build a sauna bar, it was going to be us,\u201d says Mikko Kiskinen, one of Kyr\u00f6\u2019s founders. \u201cFor Finns, the sauna is where everything happens. Business deals, friendships, arguments, ideas. It\u2019s the most democratic room in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea that started Kyr\u00f6 also began in a sauna. In 2012, Kiskinen and a group of friends were sweating it out when one of them brought along a bottle of American rye whiskey. \u201cBefore that moment, I didn\u2019t even know you could make rye whisky,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we all just looked at each other and thought, why on earth are we not doing this in Finland?\u201d<\/p>\n Rye is Finland\u2019s national grain. It underpins its bread, its farming and its food culture. Yet at the time, no one was making whisky from it. \u201cWe had absolutely no idea what we were doing,\u201d Kiskinen says, grinning, when talking about those early years. \u201cThe learning curve was brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, that learning has been done. Kyr\u00f6 is Finland\u2019s first and most internationally successful whisky distillery, exporting around 80 percent of its whisky to 35 countries, and has become one of the most distinctive spirits brands in the world.<\/p>\n Getting there still feels like a pilgrimage. From London, it\u2019s a flight via Stockholm over the Gulf of Bothnia to Vaasa, then a drive through vast, flat plains that were once seabed. Traditional red-painted wooden barns punctuate endless rye fields. The Reinil\u00e4nkoski river slips quietly past the distillery when it isn\u2019t frozen. In winter, thick snow blankets everything. <\/p>\n The distillery is made up of a barrel warehouse, production buildings, and a guesthouse that sleeps up to ten people, where visitors eat together, drink together and, inevitably, sauna together. There is one sauna for people. Another for whisky.<\/p>\n See also: Johnnie Walker Vault: Whisky\u2019s Most Exclusive Experience<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n![\"kyro](\"https:\/\/elitetraveler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/12\/kyro-finnish-whisky-sauna-2560x1707.jpg\")
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