In which I meet a lassie fae Dumbarton who doesn’t bite, I find a church pew I’d visit every Sunday guaranteed, and find out just what Caol Ila has been doing since last we met. There’s also the last ferry ride of the trip during which I rediscover a British culinary delight…

Our fourth and last day on Islay, so we’re making the most of it. But before I get to that…

Island life agrees with me. The pace is slower (Euan at Ballygrant referred to it as double-mañana), people trust and look out for each other, and it’s just relaxing. My dreams of the past were of a wee retirement cottage somewhere in the Oban area… I think I could be sold on a wee retirement cottage somewhere on Islay. Just for part of the year. We’d rent it out the rest of the year. <sigh> I’ll be back to Islay. I mean, after all, they’re re-opening Port Ellen next year, so I have to!

But, I haven’t left yet, so let’s get down to business; to defeat the dram!

We have a tasting and a tour and tasting booked before our 1530 ferry to the mainland. We start the day at Bunnahabhain (boona-HAV-in) with a Warehouse 9 Tasting. A guided tasting of four cask strength whiskies, at 1030, on a Sunday. Gods I love this island.

Our guide through the tasting is Danielle, fae Dumbarton, and she wins hands-down for THE most entertaining guide of the trip. I haven’t laughed so hard in a tasting ever. She’s a scream, and her laugh should be bottled and sold to cheer people up the world over.

She collected us and led us (at a brisk pace, near jog) to the warehouse, where she directed us to what is, hands-down, my favourite tasting space in the world. I mean, it’s in a dunnage warehouse surrounded by aging casks, so that’s a helluva start. But the wee section set aside for tastings… There’s an expression in Scotland: “Grab a pew”. It just means “Have a seat”. Danielle hollers “Grab a pew”, and there are actual pews. Five pews, arranged facing four barrels that Danielle drew from for the tasting. Not THIS is the church service I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I’d be there, every Sunday, for and adding to my sins; and not caring a whit!

Reverend Danielle started by encouraging us to get cosy, and promising she wouldn’t bite. To which my response was “Aww…”. I couldn’t help it, it’s my standard smart-arse response to that comment. And it sortof stopped her in her tracks as, apparently, no-one had ever responded that way before. I win! But she recovered fast and I believe her next response was that it was a wee bit early in the day, which I thoroughly appreciated. We’ll call it a draw 🙂

Danielle was drawing directly from the casks lined up in front of us, which was pretty great. No denying you’re getting it straight from the cask. She was using a Copper Dog, versus the valinch (va-LINCH) that Iain MacArthur used for the Lagavulin warehouse tasting. A valinch is basically a two foot long metal pipette, that you suck the whisky into. It would take elephantine lungs to fill the valinch and get to taste the whisky, so it’s safe and sanitary. Not to say that I wouldn’t try (or, um, /haven’t/ tried) to use it as a straw… But the copper dog is more traditional for scooping and testing. (Hmm. Maybe with the whole “scoop the poop” movement, I should take that in a different direction, given Copper DOG and all). OK, strike that. More detail. The Copper Dog is a copper cylinder on a rope (leash) which you drop through the bung hole (oboy) on the cask, into the liquid, and pull out a sample (looks like about 100 ml).

Rumor has it that, in ye olde days, distillery workers would walk around with copper dogs stuck down their socks or elesewhere, and would sneak a hefty dram whenever nobody was looking. Management put a stop to this, not because it was impacting their stocks (you’d drink yourself to death before you could impact it that much), but more because they were worried that the staff were plastered all the time. Cask whisky is, after all, cask strength.

Once our host had drawn enough liquid, she began filling glasses with jusr a wee holeecrapthatsabloodyhugedram! I watched her pour the first dram, and honestly thought she’d overpoured. Nope. We ALL got the same 1.5oz pour, of cask strength whisky, at 1030, on a Sunday. Gods I love this island. And it was the same for all four pours. Which became five (for real, not just because I’d had four huge pours). Five 1.5oz drams, of cask strength whisky, at 1030, on a Sunday. Gods we love Danielle.

(Truth be told, since I was driving us to the next stop, I did just drink half. But the Reverend D. had sample bottles ready for such eventualities, and a few of us took half of our drams away with us to finish later. Guess what I’m drinking as I write this… 😉 )

I’m not even going to try to report on this amazing tasting. Like I said, our host was hilarious, and a natural: she’d only be on the job for six weeks and easily paced Iain MacArthur, who has a few more weeks under his belt. She caught what’s left of my accent and asked about it – “Where’re you from, pet?” – and we gave each other grief about where we grew up. And that was the tone of the tasting: stories, jokes, jibes, and a whole lot of laughing. It was just fantastic.

I will mention a few things that our inimitable guide told us throughout the tasting…

  • Warehouse No. 9, the whisky kirk we were sitting in, is warehouse 9 of 6. There’s been a few changes over the years.
  • It was originally the site of the floor maltings before becoming a warehouse. Truth be told, they tore down the entire village to build parts of the distillery, but they did this just before the village fell down of its own accord, so no harm no foul.
  • When considering sherry casks, it’s worth noting that sherry can only officially be made in a 160 square kilometer triangular area of Spain. That would fit onto the wee island of Islay just over four times.
  • There’s not enough sherry casks, so everyone – EVERYONE – needs to drink more sherry. Two bottles per year per person. Get on that asap, please.
  • That said, there are some sherry makers who are making sherry to put into the casks bound for Scotland… and are then just dumping the sherry because they make more money off the casks.
  • On that note, sherry casks cost around $1,500 at the low end, maybe ten times as much as bourbon barrels. If people in the world drank more sherry, there would be more casks at lower prices. So get on that sherry drinking. What do you mean you don’t have your two bottles yet? What the hell’s keeping you!?
  • Seriously, go buy some sherry. I’ll wait.
  • I’m waiting.
  • The sherry casks could last up to 100 years, but may only be used once or twice. For example, sherry casks used for actual sherry could be used to age the sherry for 30 years; then Scots put whisky in it for 20 years, putting the cask at about my age. No’ bad.
  • The angel’s share at Bunnahabhain is only about 1.1%, because the temperature is pretty constant year round at that part of the island. The one week of summer doesn’t throw things off too much.
  • Did you know that the angels’ share has an opposite from down below? The Devils’ Cut is when a cask leaks, which does happen, and loses some of the liquid.
  • I’m personally glad for the existence of a devils’ cut; there’s a MUCH higher chance that I’ll be partaking of that…
  • John believes he’s going to increase the angels’ share. Yeah right. I’ll hold a place in line for him.
  • Another Bunnahabhain fact: they peat to about 45 ppm, which puts them in the middle range.
  • Another Bunnahabhain fact: they get their sherry casks from Gonzales Byas.

Danielle hates it when folks talk about barrels in warehouses “going to sleep”. They don’t sleep. They’re constantly working, breathing, reacting with the spirit to make our whisky amazing. They work their “butts” off! Hah!

Here’s what we drank:

  1. 2006 Manzanilla Cask Matured, 16 years, 58.6%, unpeated. This was absolutelty phenomenal.
  2. 2004 PX Noi Matured, 18 years, unpeated. Noi means the sherry was over 30 years old. This was not your typical PX whisky, and tasted like something halfway between Fino and PX.
  3. 2005 Rum Cask finished (Bourbon barrels for 12 years, Rum quarter cask for 5 years), 17 years, 54.9%, unpeated. Dear lords this was astounding.
  4. 2005 Olorosol Cask Matured, 17 years, 52.9%, peated. This is the single best Oloroso sherry I have ever had. I’m drinking it last tonight, after I’ve finished writing this post. In my bed. Don’t go there.
  5. Bonus: 2009 Amarone Cask Finished (“Sherry” casks for 10 years, Amarone casks for 3 years), 13 years, 61%. Dear gods. I have a bottle of this in my case. A small bottle. Because it was utterly unique (literally, there are no other Amarone in the warehouse) and utterly amazing.

OK, all good things must come to an end, and the same was true for our Sunday Service in Warehouse No. 9. Everyone who finished their drams was, um, happy. Seeing angels. Singing praises. All of the above.

Everyone made their way to the end of the pier for photographs, which in hindsight was a remarkably dangerous I order to do things in. Still, noone got wet so all was good (talk about a baptism!). Also got a nice shot of the two barrels pointing the way to Bunnahabhain’s two sister distilleries, Tobermory on Mull, and Deanston back on the mainland.

We made our purchases and headed out. Oh, about the purchases. Bunnahabhain are awesome and do this thing that NONE of the other distilleries do: they offer multuple sized bottles of /most/ of their special (read: pricey) expressions, including 50ml sample bottles. It’s amazing, and I love them for it. It makes purchasing a really nice, very rare, expression affordable. I have five to share with my ladies when I get home. Any one of them by themselves in a full bottle would have been half of my spending budget for the trip. I wish more distilleries did this.

Right, we’re leaving now, for real, and with a much greater appreciation for Bunnahabhain whisky and tasting guides from Dumbarton.

20 mins later we were checking in for our tour and tasting at Caol Ila. Seriously. We’re not phuqing about on this trip.

Now, I’ve been to Caol Ila twice before: 2006 and 2018. The first time, the distillery was dark and dad and I just had a dram, or two. The second time, I did the basic tour, which was great. Both times, the visitor center was the same wee space, about the same size as the loos in the new visitor center. Diageo have spent a wee bit of money on the facility, seeing as how the whole world has realized that Caol Ila is a thing, a great single malt, and not just an ingredient in Johnnie Walker Black (though that’s still where the bulk of their product ends up). The new visitor center is fantastic, and takes up almost the entirety of the building that was the warehouse where my tour in 2018 ended. The gift shop and bar area is open and wonderful, and the bar is well equipped to serve you drams, cocktails, and snacks. The shop has expressions from a variety of Diageo products, as well as a great deal of Caol Ila’s own. A HUGE investment, and the staff are all “dead chuffed” with the new digs (actual words of at least two staff).

The tour started a wee bit late, which was unfortunate as we had to leave on time to catch our ferry. In all fairness to our tour guide, I think that “The Flavour Journey” tour needs more time. They only reopened post-pandemic and post-rennovations on August 25th of this year, and I suspect that they’re still refining the new tours. I felt bad for Alisha, our guide, as she was very apologetic as we were approaching the end of the time and it was clear that we were not going to be able to partake of the tasting portion (I was always going for driver’s drams, but would have liked to have sat through the guided tasting and cocktail with John for reference later). I’ll offer feedback suggesting that they bump the tour from 90 mins to a full 2 hours, which would fit it perfectly.

Part of the reason for this is that, before the facility tour starts, there’s a whole in-house installation experience that comes first. It’s kinda cool: there are the sensory columns, where everyone gets to nose a jar that represents a particular characteristic of Islay / Caol Ila whiskies. There’s some history of the distillery. There’s some history of Johnnie Walker. It sets the scene nicely, and is worth an extra 30 mins added on to a typical tour. When touring the distillery itself, there are prop tables along the way that, I think, are fantastic visual aids for guests who are not as familiar with the whisky making process, and prime you for the real things ahead on the tour. Worth the extra 10 mins or so that they add to the tour. Then, when you get back to the visitor center, you get three samples and a cocktail. Drivers get a mocktail, which I though was a really nice touch (mocktails are, in my opinion, hugely underappreciated). I was disappointed here because we /had/ to leave to get the ferry. (The terminal was only 5 mins away, and we knew we’d only have about a 30 minute window, but CalMac wants you there about 30 mins before, 20 at the latest on the Islay side of things). My mocktail was tasty – ginger based – but John never even got to see his proper cocktail, which was sad because I was excited to learn about a Caol Ila based cocktail. Alisha seemed to be beating herself up a little on this, but I can’t stress enough that it wasn’t on her. Her pacing through the tour was spot on; any faster and folks would have been lost. It’s just not a 90 minute tour.

I think I’m going to dispense with the few details that we got on this tour (again, I really feel our guide was feeling pressed for time so sacrificed detail on that account), and instead post some pictures with captions. Nice variation for the post.

 

Sensory Columns: Peat Smoke, Brown Sugar, Sea Air, Maritime Spice

The Walking Man Statue, painted to reflect characteristics of the area.

Grist: 10% Husk, 20% Flour, 70% Grits

Prop table, from fermentation to distillation.

The Stillhouse

A Warehouse

Maturation color changes

We rushed out of the distillery, pegged it for the car in the pouring rain, and made the ferry queue in just over five mins from when we left. Maybe 5-10 mins later, we boarded the MV Finlaggan, again on the upper level, and so ended our time on Islay. <sigh>

We grabbed some lunch as we were unlikely to eat again today (can confirm). I didn’t want a full meal as the full Scottish breakfast was doing it’s job, but the breakfast rolls sounded perfect. Alas, too late in the day for breakfast rolls, but the gent behind the food counter suggested “I could give you a roll and some chips…” and thus was I reminded of the great British culinary delight, the Chip Butty. This is chips – not French fries – served inside a bread roll with butter. Some folks add tomato sauce, some folks add brown sauce, some folks just add vinegar. I’m with the latter, the purists. So I loaded up my bread roll with butter and a ton of chips and, yeah, that hit the spot.

The crossing was relatively smooth, but wet. I was only out on deck for about 10-15 mins. Then we offloaded and followed the same cars all the way from Kennacraig on the West Coast of Scotland to the Glasgow area. We did have to pull off at a petrol station towards the ened as the car started complaining about tire pressure. Turns out that three tires were about 6 PSI (40 KPa) down, and one tire was 15 PSI (110 KPa) down. Which would explain why the car has handled like excrement this past week. Not really impressed with this vehicle, or Budget’s preparation of it for me. Filled all tires to the requisite 36 PSI (250 KPa) and we’ll see what happens [huge improvement].

Made it to Glasgow city center, where we’re booked in to the exact same room at the Carlton George Hotel that John stayed in his first two nights. Failed to find a bar that was not shoulder-to-shoulder, or served something we were interested in, so returned to the hotel and drank from the complimentary decanters they offer (vodka, gin, and whisky). I learned that vodka can be cooled using a can of 7Up from the mini fridge, and will tuck that away for future reference. Then I sat down to post Day 3, write Day 7, and enjoy my leftover communion drams from this morning’s service.

PS That 17 year peated Oloroso is utterly magnificent.