I've actually spent a fair amount of time in (whisky) distilleries and the thing is they mostly smell like warm grain, because most of what they process by volume is the mash of grain, water, and yeast that ferments to create the alcohol, and that's what produces a bunch of aromatic vapors. The actual distillation is both lower in volume (since all the grain solids have been discarded) and not very smelly since the whole still is designed to capture alcohol vapors.

