It was quite nice to wake up in a spacious, soft bed by the ocean this morning. To top it off my first whisky visit wasn’t until noon so I had time to drink a ton of coffee and catch up on some work in the morning. Since the entirety of my stay consists of going to distilleries I’m having to be driven around. So, Islay Taxis, and Freddie and Stewart deserve some credit for taking me around the island all weekend.
My schedule was based mostly on availability of tours and tastings so my first stop was at Bruichladdich (Brooke-LAD-ie) for their warehouse tasting experience. I’ve not been a big Bruichladdich drinker previously but I really enjoyed the visit there. I signed up for their warehouse tasting experience where I was expecting a rather run of the mill tasting much like I’d done at other distilleries and wineries. I was pleasantly surprised. They basically took us back to the warehouse, gathered us around three casks and drew drams right off the casks for everyone. They didn’t bother with any of the tasting pretense either, we just sat around and drank the whiskey and chatted. It was a nice approach. I’ll spare you the technical details on scotch except to say… I found Bruichladdich interesting because their Octomore scotch is the most peaty on the island, that is to say their malt gets the highest smoke PPM before distillation. However, this doesn’t come through in the Scotch (to me as much) because of the design of their stills.
The next stop was Laphroaig (right click > add to dictionary) which I think is maybe the one folks are most familiar with. Here I did the tour as well as the tasting. Laphroaig is one of the few (two I think?) distilleries on the island that still has it’s own operating malting floor. Most of the others get their malting done in Port Ellen. The tour and tasting was neat but the really fun thing about Laphroaig is the whole “friends of Laphroaig” thing that they do. Devotees will know that if you buy a bottle and send the certificate in they will deed you a small plot of land on the distillery property. If you turn up they’ll set you up with the GPS coords for your plot, some wellington boots to trudge through the peat to get there and a little flag from your native country. Luckily I chose to do this right as a downpour started… good times.
Two fairly aggressive tastings was about all I had in me for the day (or there weren’t time slots left anywhere… whatever) so after Laphroaig it was back to the hotel to rest, dry out and then have dinner.