Liz doesn't like whisky - at all, but John does. Where we live is not that far from one of the best whisky producing areas in Scotland, if not the world: Islay. There are a lot of distilleries to chose from and most run tours and have a visitor centre. With quite a bit a coordination John and Fran, a colleague from work, managed to sort out some days, the ferry (gets booked up!), 4 tours (they get booked up!) and some accomodation (gets booked up!). So, early on a Thursday in mid July, they headed off - taking the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert and then Kennacraig, on the Campbell peninsula, to Port Ellen on Islay.
We arrived about 12:30pm which was just perfect to head to our first distillery tour at Kilchoman. A newer distillery which tries to do everything, from growing the barley to bottling the spirit, on site and under their control. The tour was really great with 3 drams thrown in and a free glass and it was really great to hear their philosophy / strategy to do as much as they can in house - best of luck to them.
After a mad dash back back down the island we arrived at Ardbeg on the south coast - one of the older distilleries and more famous for its peaty flavours. Three generous drams later we'd seen their process and been able to compare in our minds to what we'd seen before - very similar but as we were to see in all distilleries, apart from Kilhoman, the barley, malting, peating, casking, bottling is outsourced / offshored. A distillery of a different scale with annual production of over 1 million litres.
The weather had been pretty miserable but after we had managed to sort ourselves out with food at the only curry house on the island, at Bowmore, it cleared so we made the most of the long evenings by heading out to Mahir Bay which faces west so we got great views of the sun dipping down over the sea. As ever, in these places, we pretty much had the beach (about 2 miles long) to ourselves.
Day 2 started with a great cooked breakfast at our B&B which was clean, comfortable and just what we needed. We headed off from there to Port Askig to catch a 10 minute ferrry to the Jura distillery at Craighouse on, you guessed it, Jura. The journey to Craighouse from Islay is via a small ferry that takes about 4/5 cars, and because of the currents between Isaly and Jura it heads off across the water at a pretty strange tragetory - they obviously know what they are doing!
From there it's a 10 mile drive on a single tracked road to Craighouse, with little traffic, and park up outside the distillery - can't miss it, it's got JURA painted in black against on the white washed building just like all the other distilleries. Apparently, it helped delivery / collection by sea identify the right distillery! After Jura, we headed back across the ferry, and Islay, to Lagavulin on the south coast. On the way we managed to call in at the visitor centre for Caol Ila (pronounced Culleela as a single word and means 'sound of Islay') which is the distillery for Johnnie Walker, a blended whisky which takes about 95% of Caol Ila's production. The scale and quality of the visitor centres at places like this just demonstrate how profitable these businesses are!
Lagavulin is kind of medium peaty in flavour and we had 4 drams and a great tour. Afterwards we headed out to Dunyvaig Castle which is on a headland projects about 1/4 mile into the sea with great views along the coast and back to the distillery. Nice dinner at a hotel about 5 miles down the road from the B&B with some local beer and fish and chips!
Day 3 we knew the weather was going to deteriorate during the day so we headed out after a hearty breakfast to Loch Gruinnart where there is a beach stretching for miles and miles. We parked up and headed out along the East side of the Loch passing a colony of about 100 seals lazing and grumbling on the sands as the tide receded, we were followed along the Loch by about 6 or so, curious as to who we were on this deserted beach.
Lunch was (for Fran) some oysters at the Oyster Shed on the shores of the loch. The oysters are farmed right outside the shed and apparently really great - I just had a coffee and cake! (which was nice!).
Second walk of the day was out to one of the headlands Port Ellen way, to the American monument, which commemorates the loss of life of two merchant ships at the end of the second world war. Visibility was pretty poor and wild goats were only just visible, but later we managed to get some better views from sea level at Singing Sands.
And so ended our 3 days trip to this amazing place - which we'd recommend to anyone interested in learning a bit more about the whisky business and what it means in this special place!
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