In which we have a hearty meal, drive a road that would make Six Flags jealous, walk all directions looking for distilleries, witness a whisky baptism, and I fall in love with a new new make spirit…

OK, first full day on Islay, so we should make the most of it. 15,000 steps and 15 drams minimum. Nae bother. But first, we’re gonnie need a REAL breakfast! Full cooked breakfast (aka Full Scottish Breakfast) should do the trick: two slices of (real) bacon, a sausage, haggis, black pudding, fried egg over easy (smashin’!), baked beans, fried tomato, and mushrooms. Oh, wi’ toast and marmalade, and coffee that would make sailors proud. Bloody brilliant.

Our goal today is to walk the Three Distilleries Pathway, which is the pedestrian path along the greatest 3 mile stretch of road in the world. No really, get this. It starts at Port Ellen (soon the site of a reopened, functional distillery). At approximately mile one, you hit Laphroaig. At approximately mile two, you hit Lagavulin. At approximately mile three, you hit Ardbeg. That’s all assuming that you started your whisky drinking early and couldn’t steer for crap. Otherwise, you’ll likely avoid hitting them and just walk or drive right past them. Which is nearly as bad – why the hell would you drive past three of the bestest distilleries in the world?

Talking of starting early…

 

We didn’t want to waste any time, so we were booked in to the 1030 Warehouse Tasting at Lagavulin. Six drams, cask strength, middle of the morning. Now THAT’s how you do a whisky holiday. Our host was the inimitable Iain MacArthur, who we believe has worked at Lagavulin longer than we’ve been alive… just about 52 years (haud yer wheesht, I know it’s close). And he didn’t waste any time. The list of drams he poured are below, and you’ll see what I mean. Bear in mind that this was over the course of an hour, so, um, not for the feint (hah! geddit?) of heart (hah! geddit?).

  •  Jazz Festival 2018, 58.5%
  •  Islay Festival (Feis Ile) 2022, 57.7%
  •  Jazz Festival 2022, 55.4%
  •  Warehouse cask 9 year, 2nd fill bourbon barrel, 58%
  •  Warehouse cask, 17 year, 1st fill Bodega sherry, 49.6%
  •  Warehouse cask, 25 year, 1st fill Bodega sherry, 51.6%

Iain wasn’t as rambunctuous as the last time I did this tasting back in 2016, but still full of life and quick of wit. Some things that I learned this time around, even just during the tasting include that “Lagavulin” means “Mill in the Hollow”. Growing up in a town called “Milngavie”, pronounced “Mulguy”, and meaning “Gavin’s Mill”, I kinda get that.

I also learned that the last whisky we tried would sell for about £100 per oh-so-very-carefully measured dram, that there are about 13,000 Lagavulin casks aging on the island in two separate locations, and that virgin oak will pretty much kill peat and smoke dead if you leave it in there for too long. The latter came about as we were talking about this year’s Feis Ile release, which spent 2 years “finishing” in virgin oak. It’s almost unrecogniseable as Lagavulin. We also learned that special bottlings like these are being, um, “pressured” or “chosen” by hotelier groups, with less and less input or influence from the likes of Iain. Why the hell you would ignore a man with 52 years of experience with the whisky you’re I have no idea, but I’m concerned at the direction this could go. At least, for the special bottlings. The core range should remain unmolested. The fact that the last three drams – from casks specifically selected by Iain – blew the others away only really sealed my point, in my own head (and palate) at least.

As things started winding down, Iain was happy to pose for pictures with folks. Turns out he’s an affy wee man, wi’ a HUGE personality 🙂 Then came the baptism. Aye, I said baptism. Some bloke on the tour joked about being baptised in whisky, and Iain was there in a flash. He drew some spirit from the cask, dipped his fingers in it, and rubbed it from forehead all the way through the bloke’s hair. Three times. There was much hilarity and recordng of video. The gent being baptized only managed “In the name of the whisky, the whisky, and the whisky.” In my head, I had “In the name of the whisky, the dram, and the new make spirit”. Scans much better. And I’m going to hell anyway, so what the heaven.

OK, now that we’re pleasantly happy, time to move on to the next stop. Since Lagavulin was the first stop, and is located basically midway between the other two distilleries, we decided to stay parked there and walk all day. So we headed West to Laphroaig (before about turning and heading East past Lagavulin to Ardbeg, after which we would about turn and head West back to Lagavulin and, well, our ride home). Security cameras outside Lagavulin show what appears to be two very confused inebriates.

Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you about the road! Not the road by the pathway, the back road we used to get here. The drive down from Ballygrant to Port Ellen can take two paths: the main road through Bowmore, or the back road straight down the penninsula-like-bit of the island. The back road has less traffic, but is single-track, which disnae bother me a whit, so back road it is… oboy. Hang on to your full Scottish breakfast! Wheeeee! OK, that was FUN! The road is paved, but drives like a 10 mile rollercoaster. Seriously, there wasn’t a hint of an even surface anywhere along this road. Straight for miles, with the occasional bend or blind hill, so speed was mostly determined by how many wheels you wanted to keep on the ground at any given time. I opted for three; maybe 2.75 average. It was all good.

OK, where were we? Ah, yes, heading West from Lagavulin to Laphroaig. The pathway is a beautiful walk, even on grey days like today. It was supposed to rain almost all day, but we never saw a drop. Cloudy, yes, but no rain. Not even much more than a gentle breeze either, which made quite the pleasant change from the 20-30mph winds of the past two days. So we made good time, and walked off a bit <ahem>, OK, a /wee/ bit of the 6 drams we’d started the day with.

Our goal at Laphroaig was simple, no appointment needed. We wanted to try a few drams, and then go and find our plots of land. Laphroaig has this marketing gimmick that’s actually a lot of fun. If you sign up as a member of “Friends of Laphroaig” (FoL), you’re awarded one square foot of land on the distillery property which you can visit, claim as your own, and even plant a flag (Eddie Izzard would be so proud). Oh, and more importantly, you can also claim rent from the distillery for, you know, doing things on your land. We started with a selection of drams at the bar (see below), then grabbed the FoL issued wellies, and headed to find our plots.

  • Cask 000065, 8 years, 2012-20, full bourbon cask maturation, 54%
  • Cask 0004, 13 year (5 yr bourbon, 8 yr PX), 54.1
  • An Cuan Mor Travel Retail, 48%

The plots are not, of course, on particularly desirable land. Bullshit, they’re in a manky field across the road from the main distillery site. But with the assistance of particularly recalcitrant GPS and equally crappy Google Maps, we zeroed in on our spots, planted our flags, took our photies, then headed back to demand the rent. Rent is a free 50ml sample bottle of Laphroaig 10, stamped with the FoL logo. A fun gimmick like I said.

That done, we had about an hour to stroll back past Lagavulin and out to Ardbeg before our next tour. We took our time, enjoyed the weather and the walk, and arrived with about 5-10 mins to spare. Perfick!

Now the Ardbeg tour wasn’t a normal tour as such, but it sounded particularly interesting to whisky geeks like us. Ardbeg just finished building a new stillhouse, which came online in Feb 2021. This wasn’t in addition to the original, but intended to replace it and double things up: 2 wash stills, 2 spirit stills, 12 washbacks, but still just one mash tun as the second is still being built. (Fun fact, the spirit receiving tank is so damned big that it can hold the entire year’s run of product; so it’s all transferred to casks at exactly the same time each year, which is crazy). They made the switch from the old equipment to the new overnight, between runs, so never lost a day’s production, which is pretty bloody smart and kept the accountants happy. But this means that they’re in an unusual position to offer something cool to geeks like us.

Tours only started again in Jan 2021, and here they had two new stills just waiting to be showed off. So how about, while they’re new, the distillery offers a tour to do just that: show off the new shiny copper things. For that to mean anything, you really need to compare, and so was born the “Old Stillhouse, New Stillhouse” tour. One other fun thing: there’s no finished (read: aged) product from the new stills yet (it hasn’t been three years), so to show off the new stills, they have to offer New Make Spirit. Apparently Ron, our tour guide… excuse me, our Senior tour guide, has been asking the distillery administration to let them pour new make on tours for years. To which the response has always been an emphatic “No!”. So he chanced it for this new tour, and received an emphatic “Yes!”so he jumped on it. Now, this agreement sounds like it only holds for as long as the stillhouse is consided “new”, so this may be a 2022 only tour. It remains to be seen. Regardless, we got on it and frankly I don’t care if no-one else does do nya. Sorry, nine drams in, etc. etc.

I may come back and write more details about the actual equipment, but here are a few highlights. The wash still is intended to capture damned near everything it distills, so the lyne arms are pointed down and there’s not a lot to get in the way (fat neck, etc). One reason for this is that the waste from the wash still is pumped into the bay that the distillery is built on, so they want that to be as clean and non-polluting as possible. The spirit still, on the other hand, has a lyne arm angled up, complete with purifier, because they want as clean and light a spirit as they can get. They use shell and tube condensers, which has a byproduct of heating the water used to cool the alcohol vapors to almost 60 C. So they capture that and feed it into the heating coils inside the stills. Waste not, want not. Hadn’t come across that little tidbit before, so I’ll be curious to hear if that’s a common practice at other distilleries.

While we visited the original, now defunct stillhouse, we were poured a dram as Ron talked about the importance of the equipment etc. This was a 1st fill bourbon cask, aged 12.5 years, 56.83%. Perfect for their Uigedal expression, which is pretty much what that run had been for. This was confirmed when we returned to the old still house later for another dram, this time a 2nd fill Oloroso cask aged 10 years, 60.46%. Mix those two together in the right proportions and cut it down, and you have Uigedal.

 

Now, between those pours, we stepped in to the new stillhouse, where many of us ooo’d and aaaa’d at the shiny new equipment, which we were allowed to swarm around largely unsupervised as long as we stayed on walkways etc. Very trusting, but Ron seemed to have a good handle on the group of geeks he had with him. But the highlight wasn’t the stills, not even for me. Nope, the highlight was the dram of Ardbeg New Make Spirit, at a mild 71.5%. Holee crap. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting this (I hadn’t studied the stills by this point, which I wish I had to see if it would have lessened the surprise). This is easily the best NMS I’ve ever tasted. It’s incredible. And it’s damned near /all/ tropical and grain. I would have no problem at all owning a bottle or three of this stuff and serving it as is, because it didn’t drink like new make. I mean, yes, it was “hot”, but didn’t feel like 71.5%. I can’t recall ever noticing these notes in their whiskies before, so I’ll be paying them a lot more heed in the future. While pining for the NMS. Which not even I will be able to taste in the future, just like the rest of you. But I did today, so nya. (Sorry, 12 drams in, etc. etc.

Eventually Ron pried us out of the new still house, plied us with the oloroso-aged dram mentioned above, and returned us to the visitor center… where he plied us with a pour of the 19 year Triagh Bhan Batch 3. Which, to be honest, I found unlike any Ardbeg I’d ever tried. They don’t really have anything else aged that far, which is really likely the reason why it seemed unfamiliar to me. Aging smokey/peaty whiskies that long naturally reduces the smoke/peat, and leaves really just traces of them behind. It was a good dram, don’t get me wrong, but it was a dram for Ardbeg enthusiasts, who would get and enjoy the evolution of the whisky; not so much the casual drinker who, I think, would not get a dram representative of the entirety of the rest of their range.

OK, so where are we. We’re three miles from Port Ellen, about a mile from Lagavulin and our car, and we’re 13 cask strength drams into the day. So, we walked back to the car in a progressively straighter line, drove back to the hotel in an evenly bouncy road, lounged around for a while, then hit the hotel restaurant for dinner (curry night tonight), and a couple more drams. Well, two for me, three for John, but he was completing a list which I encouraged him to do, so that’s at least partially on me. Of course, we share our drams, so it’s really five each.

(In case you care, John was completing his Laphroaig Cairdeas list)

(Also in case you care, somewhat ironically, by encouraging him to complete his list of this particular Laphroaig series, and in tasting each of said drams, I put myself one dram shy of completing the same list. Only I didn’t really connect those dots, so I’ll have to go back for that one stray dram… which the hotel bar didn’t have on the list of, I kid you not, 1,000 expressions that they serve).

All in all, a fantastic day.

15,000 steps and 15 drams? How about 18,000 steps and 18 drams. Heh heh heh. All too easy…

Bonus Random Fact: Ardbeg is owned by Glenmorangie, so once casks are filled, they spend time aging on site at Ardbeg and off site in Glenmorangie’s warehouses. Much like Ardnahoe, the loch providing water to Ardbeg is huge (26,000 cu ft), so never runs out of water. But they go dark in winter by choice for maintenance etc.