A Case of the Mondays

oday started well with a visit to Laphroaig. I joined Friends of Laphroaig last year on their website. Now they email me birthday cards and invite me to internet broadcasts of tastings. Also, I have a lease for a small plot of land and can visit once a year to inspect my plot and collect my rent (a dram, or 50ml of 10 year). The visitors' center has a pretty nice lounge that's only lacking free wifi to keep Bill from just moving in. They do a small portion of their own malting on the premises, so we got to go through that stage in the tour. Our tour guide had been working at the distillery for decades and did an excellent job of walking us through. At the end, he passed out certificates and bottles to FoL members and we hung around for a while trying the different spirits. Then I pulled on some rubber waders and walked out to my plot to plant a little flag and let Bill take pictures. By far the most touristy thing we've done in some ways, but after a few drinks, a pretty satisfying activity.

In the afternoon, we toured Lagavulin and got to see a seal. They had just run out of their distiller's edition, but had a 12 year cask strength. I might be a sucker for anything that's cask strength. Later that evening, we had dinner at a hotel where our tour guide from Lagavulin tends bar in the evenings. They had the distiller's edition available, so we at least got to taste what we're missing out on. Man, that was a good Scotch. The peat in the finish went on forever. No wonder it's all gone. A guy from Boston went on and on to us about the Craftsman Tour at Bowmore. His detailed description of this ₤22 tour was pretty much identical to the Laphroiag ₤2 tour, but with a taste of whisky straight out of the barrel. He was pretty excited about how worth it that tour was so we didn't tell him how much that sounded like ours. Maybe a dram straight from the barrel is worth ₤20.

In between our two meetings with Hazel, we stopped by the Islay Ale Brewery and Finlaggan. I'd been trying to figure out how to make it to Finlaggan during operating hours for it's visitor's center, but they close so early that it was continuing to not work out. A sign at Lagavulin informed us that the visitor's center was closed for renovations, but the foot paths were still open. No longer bothering to adhere to a schedule, we made our way there. Another couple arrived about the same time, but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. There was also a perturbed sheep. He was fenced into a small (if our front yard is small) area all alone and was voicing his displeasure to anyone around. I have no idea what he could have done to get banished to that isolated pasture, I assume he's a clever sheep and the farmers need to keep him away from the other sheep to prevent some kind of woolly revolt.

After dinner, which included scallops caught by our proprietors, we tried to go to a visitor's reception in another hotel. Note to self: visitor's reception = local talent show. The fiddler was quite talented, but the rest I could easily have skipped. When they busted out the slides, we ran for it. The layout looked like free tastings if you made it to the end, but they should really have started by getting us toasted before trying to subject us to a slide show. I can relax and drink Caol Ila at the B&B, where nobody sings about elephants laying ivory eggs, thank you very much.