In which I confirm that Tobermory isn’t just a womble, learn the correct pronunciation of Ledaig, meet a woman who is the reverse of me, run out of money briefly, and sail on some FERRIES!!
Today was a wee bit unusual for this trip in that I more-or-less stayed put for the day. At least, I came back to the same B&B for a second night (Garragh Mhor B&B in Ellenabeich). I didn’t actually just spend all day at the B&B, that would have been a waste. But I did stay in the area. More-or-less.
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Aside: Tales of Ellenabeich
Ellenabeich is located on the west coast of the Isle of Seil, just south of Oban. It’s comprised of about fifty cottages (and a few houses) that would fit in the boot (trunk) of the average American car. Beautiful spot, quiet and removed from the hustle and bustle of the massive metropolis that is Oban <ahem>. Back in my late teens, early twenties, I and a couple of good friends would come here once or twice a year to hide out and relax. One of said friends’ family owned cottage number 9, which was the impetus for the first trip. It quickly because a favourite spot with annual plans made there and then. Even just the trip to the cottage was worth it. First, we took the train – the West Highland Line – one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world, now known to Harry Potter fans the world over as it’s the route of the Hogwarts Express. Next, we would make a quick stop for supplies at the local supermarket. Once bought, we put everything in a box and labeled it with the address, and just sort of left it there. The last leg of the trip was a short bus journey to the front door of the cottage, where the driver would jump out and hand us our box of groceries ’cause the bus is also the local delivery service. Total journey time 3-4 hours, after which we had no reason (or ability, really) to leave until the end of the trip.
Our preferred time of year to head up was New Year, because none of the three of us particularly enjoyed the raucous of Scottish Ne’er (my how times have changed 🙂 ). In hindsight, we just got lucky with that: trying to avoid one of the main, annual Scottish celebrations by “hiding” in a close-knit, remote Scottish community was a wee bit daft. Case in point. One Ne’er, the three of us were walking back to the cottage from the village phone box… You see, at that time, few of the cottages had phones in them, and the village mostly relied on the one phone box at the end of the road. If you wanted to phone someone in the village, you called the phone box and hoped that a) someone was passing by, and b) they felt like answering it. If they were and they did, events proceeded something like this:
“Hullo, Ellenabeich!”
“Could I speak with someone from number 9?”
“Aye, haud on…” Villager walks down to number 9, batters on the front door and yells “There’s a phone call fur ye!”
Occupant of number 9 “A’right, ta!”, put on their shoes and wander to the phone box where, hopefully, the caller hasn’t given up hope.
Where the hell was I? Ah yes! We had just called our respective families to wish them a happy new year, and were heading back to the cottage when a nice lady stopped us and asked is if we would First Foot her and her husband… Hmm, let me explain.
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Aside Aside: First Footing
First Footing is a Scottish tradition associated with New Year. If you First Foot someone, you are the first person to set foot inside their house after the new year. Who and/or what that person is is supposed to be good or bad luck. Really, it’s down to the gift they bring. If they bring food, you’ll be well fed for the year; if they bring coal, your house will be warm for the year, etc. etc. Our own family tradition was that my dad, sister and I would drive to our grandparents’ houses on Ne’er Day and take turns first footing them.
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Turns out that this woman and her husband had just bought a cottage in the village, didn’t know anyone, so had no-one to first foot them. We were happy to oblige, so dashed back to number 9 to grab some shortbread and the largest lump of coal we could find, and headed back. We knocked on the door, were invited in, and offered our gifts. Turns out that the lump of coal was sufficiently huge that it didn’t fit in their wee fireplace, so they set it to the side as a decoration. We chatted, had a dram, and then, a few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. The confused owners got up and opened the door, to find the entire village standing outside. The locals knew that they were new, and wanted to welcome them properly. To this day, I have no idea how the entire village fitted inside that cottage, but they did. It was loud, friendly and a great time. It was, of course, exactly the type of thing that the three of us were there to escape, so we squeezed (very literally) ourselves out and headed back to our antisocial solitude.
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Right, now, back to the present. Or, at least, a few days ago. I was staying in the area, not going to travel too far, so what to do? I have this whole distiller-a-day thing going on, so that’s my goal. I know (and love) Oban, which has its own distillery. But I also know (and love) the distillery, having toured it twice now. There’s not much else in the immediate area, not without driving for a while. What to do, what to do. Welllll….
The Isle of Mull is a short ferry-ride west from Oban. I’ve only ever driven across it to get elsewhere (Iona a couple of times, and some boat tours that leave from the western edge). I therefore decided it was time that I fixed that! Besides, the main town is Tobermory which, strangely enough, plays home to the Tobermory distillery. Ferry ride and a distillery? That might be the perfect day! Done and done.
Have I mentioned that I love sailing on the Caledonia Macbrayne ferries? No? Well I do. Love it. I get a wee bit giddy. Partly, it’s the big kid in me (big boats, big boats!); partly, it’s because family holidays as a kid were spent on the Isle of Bute, which meant a ferry ride, so my association with the ferries is Holidays! Also, I could spend days just standing on the deck of CalMac ferries, sailing around the western highlands and islands of Scotland, wind and sea air blasting me in the face. It’s invigorating. Honestly, I’ve somewhat made it a goal to incorporate at least one ferry ride into each visit to Scotland nowadays. I’m three for three at the moment 🙂
OK, so, plans sorted for the day. Trish’s take on the full Scottish breakfast was similar to the others: 2 sausage, 2 bacon, beans, tattie scone, mushrooms, that bloody tomato and, the real treat, Stornoway black pudding! Made in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, the most northern of the Outer Hebrides, this is considered to be the best black pudding in the country. It was affy tasty.
Then I head off to the Oban ferry terminal because FERRY RIDE!! The ferry in question was, appropriately, the M.V. Isle of Mull. I’ve taken her before a couple of times. She’s one of the largest in the CalMac fleet: approx 960 passengers and 70-80 cars. Sadly, she’s only has a rear passenger deck, which means no facing into the wind, but there’s plenty of space and the views from her deck are wide and beautiful.
Photograph: https://www.calmac.co.uk/fleet/mv-isle-of-mull
The sailing to Craignure is only about 50 minutes, after which I drove off, turned right, and headed the 30 mins along the east coast of Mull to Tobermory. For some reason, Nav decided to get stroppy with me (I didn’t really need it, but by this point I was testing how accurate it was. Summary: it wasn’t!). It seemed to insist that the road was about twenty feet to the left and kept insisting that I “Please refer to the map!” So I muted it. It took it’s revenge by insisting that the back, single-track farm road was the best way into Tobermory, not that pesky main road I was already on. But I found the distillery anyway, so nuts to it.
Breakfast was very much still with me, so I just headed in to the distillery visitor centre about half an hour early. I got chatting with Katherine, who would be our tour guide. I found out later that the reason her accent was confusing me was that it was much like mine, only in reverse. She was from California originally, spent a year or two in Minneapolis, then found herself in Scotland. Her accent was therefore hybrid American-Scottish, versus my own clearly different Scottish-American.
Tobermory is a tiny wee distillery (reminiscent of Oban, actually) that produces two, distinct single malts: Tobermory and Ledaig. The latter is pronounced “LEE-chik” (and not “leh-daig” or “leh-CHEEK”, as I had always pronounced it). They are also one of a family of three distilleries, along with Deanston (just outside Doune) and Bunnahabhain (on Islay). The distillery is not in production at the moment as they are doing some major refurbishments. But we still got to walk through the entire facility, it was just quieter than usual.
Highlights of the tour…
The distillery water source is a small loch on the hillside above them. It’s entirely rain fed, which means dry spells halt production (though typically only briefly, this is Scotland after all). They consume about one million litres per day (mostly for cooling purposes), so they can drain the loch pretty quickly. Katherine drew our attention to an interesting difference in their water source versus, say, the Islay distilleries. Since their water is all rain water, it tends to be softer and even slightly sweet. Compare that to most Islay distilleries which draw water from lochs largely fed from ground water, which has soaked through the peaty soil on the island. That water is sharper, more astringent in nature. As one of only three raw ingredients in whisky, you start to see how this could influence the final character of the spirit.
They use a Porteus mill (of course), though their grist recipe is different from most of the distilleries I visited this trip: 80% grits (the good, sugar-rich part), 15% husk, and as little flour as they can manage. Five-ton mash tun, a bit bigger than I expected for their size. Fermentation takes 50-90 hours, which is a heck of a range. Turns out that their washbacks are in a room that isn’t climate controlled at all, so they’re subject to weather conditions, and those conditions determine the fermentation time. Hadn’t come across that before, either. Their stills are more standard, though two of the four are old enough now that they’re looking to replace them (part of the current refurbishment). Replacing an entire still is a little unusual – the risk of change to the character of the whisky is considered a real thing – but it does happen. And, finally, they use all the same equipment for both single malts… waaaaaitaminute. Whit? Ledaig is smokey smokey, and Tobermory is anything but. How does that work? Well, Katherine told us.
First, while their barley is the same for both (sourced from Aberdeenshire), it’s malted differently. Tobermory barley is malted in Berwick, Ledaig barley is mated at Port Ellen Malting on Islay, peat smoked to about 39ppm. Second, the distillery splits their distillation runs into two, five-month seasons, one for each label. They take a month off in between to clean the equipment, in particular after the Ledaig run, in order to avoid too much cross-contamination. Third, there is almost no maturation on-site, therefore no angels’ share influence. The maturation is interesting in itself.
As I mentioned above, this is a tiny distillery. I mean, the town of Tobermory is tiny, and some of the flats in the area are built in what used to be the already modest warehouses. Maturation is therefore done with the help of the other members of the distillery family. The new make spirit is shipped down to Deanston, where it’s put into casks. Those casks are then shipped to Islay for 10 years maturation. They do this very deliberately. These are island malts, and they want them aged on a nearby island to take on some of those characteristics (most obviously the brine of the sea air). After 10 years, the casks are returned to Deanston for any further maturation and/or cask finishing.
Their whiskies are non-chill filtered, which means that they sit at a slightly higher ABV. Why? Because chill filtering removes a lot of the oils in whisky*. Non-chill filtered whiskies keep these oils (adding to that smoother, creamier mouth-feel), which start to show as cloudiness as the whisky cools down. Higher ABV means lower freezing temperature which means the whisky can drop to a lower temperature without clouding. Apparently. It’s chemistry. Chemistry and I don’t get along.
*I’m led to believe that the chill-filtering process came about largely as a PR/aesthetics move. If you cool down or chill a whisky that hasn’t been chill filtered by, say, adding ice, the oils will start to solidify and make the dram cloudy. There’s nothing wrong with that, but folks (esp. in the US), were put off by this. Now, I recently heard of an extreme example whereby a giant glob of solid matter congealed in a bottle of bourbon. Shaking the hell out of it put it all back into solution, but I can see how that would be a tad off-putting.
We finished up with a dram each of the Tobermory 10 year and Ledaig 10 year. It was a fascinating side-by-side comparison when you consider that the only real difference (at least that we were told) is the malting. And I started to see that: under the smoke, there was definitely commonality. Fun stuff, and again, why I love taking these tours.
I stuck around afterwards chatting with Katherine, who was kind enough to pour me a taste of her personal favourite dram: the Ledaig 11 year port pipe finish. A distillery exclusive. Also now appearing in my collection.
Alright, tour was over, what next?
I headed to Tobermory Chocolates to purchase some gifts, and stopped for a toasted tea-cake and coffee. Very civilized. No more than that, because breakfast was /still/ with me!
Then I decided to pull out a little extra cash so that I had enough to pay for the B&B the next morning. “Insufficient funds!” Um, what? A quick review of purchases later, and I realised that I’d goofed and put the heftiest whisky purchase of the trip on the wrong card. No problem, I have a card for the other account. “Incorrect PIN!” Bugger, that’s right, the card was replaced recently and I forgot the new PIN. Hmm. Well, I’ll just have to send a quick text to my lovely wife and ask her to transfer funds. Nope, no international texts from my new UK, pay-as-you-go phone. Fine. I’ll use up some minutes with an international call. Yeah, no dice. Fine. I’ll add some credit to the account using a credit card, and use that to make the call. Only Tobermory is remote and contained enough that there is no data connection. Alrighty then. The post-office has a sign on it saying I can add funds there. No problem. One problem: closed on Wednesdays. Huh, well there’s bound to be a number I can call to add funds; it should be listed somewhere on the top-up card, right? Wrong! All websites, which is something of an oversight on their part. I finally started pouring through the various introductory texts I received when the phone went active, found a shortcut number for checking balance and eventually arrived at a menu for adding funds. Added a tenner, plenty to call home. Called Mija who informed me that she got my first text and had transferred money ages ago <sigh>.
I finished up my wanderings about Tobermory, and decided to head back to Craignure ahead of schedule and see if I could catch an earlier sailing than the one I had booked. Got to the pier, found the CalMac agent:
“I’m booked on the next sailing, but I…”
The agent grinned, and pointed to the lane with two lorries and about a dozen cars. “Does that maybe answer your question?”
“Aye, aye it does. I think I’ll just wait.”
So I hung around Craignure, watching the Isle of Mull dock, offload, reload and sail off, marveling as always at the efficiency of the crew, and maneuverability of such a ruddy big boat. As it turns out, by sticking to my original schedule, I got to sail on a ferry that was new to me, the MV Coruisk. Younger and smaller than her sister on the same run (250 passengers, 40 cars), she sports the less common port-side ramp. Many of the vehicle ferries are roll-on, roll-off: there’s a ramp in the front and back so that vehicles can just drive straight on and straight off. There are some ports, however, that require the ferry to dock side on, hence the port-side ramp. The main body of the ship was also unusual in that it sat a couple of decks above the vehicle deck, with just open space below. Never seen that design before, so the ferry geek in me was happy!
Photograph: https://www.calmac.co.uk/fleet/mv-coruisk
Got back to Oban, grabbed a hefty and tasty black-pudding supper for dinner, then drove back to Ellenabeich. At which point I climbed a hill, but I already posted about that.
Tomorrow is the last day on the road, with one more distillery visit planned. A good night’s sleep, then it’s aff back tae Glasgow!
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