Spirits and Smashed Cars

My previous distillery tour experience has only been the second half of the Buffalo Trace tour, which goes from the barrels to the bottling. Today I've gotten to fill in that gap at Ardbeg.

There's a cafe in the visitor's center where a waitress gave Bill a brief education of the Lordship of the Isles because of a pronunciation mistake on his part. The food's pretty good and it was nice to warm up with a pot of tea after this morning's adventure. There's also a gift shop to peruse while waiting for tour time. Our tour group ended up being a lot smaller than the group we'd seen heading out when we arrived for lunch. Us, a Canadian fellow and a group of Swiss gentlemen. We started with a history of the distillery, the town it once supported, and the general process of making Scotch before making our way into the production rooms.

Port Ellen now malts barley for all of the distilleries on Islay. A couple still smoke some of their own, but buy the rest from Port Ellen. Being that they use peat to generate the smoke to dry the barely, Port Ellen smells fantastic. Every distillery has their own specifications for the malting process. (Speaking of Port Ellen, we found a bar tonight that has a 23 year old Port Ellen for only ₤15 a glass. I didn't get it tonight, but if I want to have another dram of Port Ellen in Port Ellen, that's the place I'll go. They also had a Port Charlotte, which we found to be confusing as Port Charlotte isn't an active distillery, but it was a new bottle. Turns out that Bruichladdich is aging barrels there and selling it under that name. It's the same distinctive shape of bottle.)

We got to try some of the smoked malted barley. They could put it in boxes and sell it as cereal and I'd be happy. There's probably only a small market for Peatieos. When we got to the wort, she dragged up a ladle full and let us all stick a finger in to taste. It's still quite sweet in addition to smokey as the yeast had only just been added. I would also gladly drink Ardbeg cola if it existed.

After passing the 2 stills, we got to also stick a finger into the freshly distilled spirits, which are a little over 140 proof. The tour guide asked us if that wasn't too strong. Bill and I have been inadvertently preparing for just this occasion with the last two releases of George T. Stagg bourbon so, no, it was strong but still contained a peat flavor, though far from developed to full potential.

After the tour, we got to sample a special release that was only sold to Adrbeg Committee Members and at the distillery. It was aged in wine barrels and bottled at a higher proof than their usual release. It was very tasty, but I couldn't detect any sort of wine flavor in it. I can taste the port in the Bowmore Dawn and the sherry in Aberlour's sherry cask edition, but this was a peaty, cask strength single malt as far as I can taste.

After the tour, we walked around the grounds and took some photos before returning to the car. Which someone had run into the side of. Actually, our waitress from lunch had backed into the side of it and was frantically looking for us. She called the rental car company and told them what had happened so we won't be held liable and since the car is still drivable, we're going to keep it for the rest of the week. Most of the damage is to the rear driver's side door, but it's been bent just enough that it catches the corner of the front door, making it impossible to open from the inside. I quickly discovered that if I reach to the back door and pop it open, there's enough clearance to open my door, which is a lot more convenient than waiting for Bill to act like a gentlemen, and since I've been opening that door to get my purse out anyway, it's just a reordering of the process I was already doing.

We then ventured further down the road to visit the world's most dangerous animal, the kind of forest that faeries would surely inhabit, and an old stone cross. When the rain started falling, we headed back to Port Ellen for dinner. Fantastically spicy lamb vindaloo for me!