Still Life

We've only made it to the cyber cafe one of the last few days, and the wifi was down. Obviously this has not deterred us from writing.

Today was our last full day on Islay and we still had two distilleries to see, Bunnahabhain and Caol Ila, both on the sound between Islay and Jura. The day started out sunny and warm, but just after putting a little more than $100 into the gas tank, clouds rolled in and showers started. This added a certain element of excitement to driving the long, winding, single-lane roads carved into the cliffs. We were indoors for the worst of the rain, fortunately.

The Bunnahabhain car park is not for beginners. Don't do it your first day driving here. The distillery has the largest mash pot and washbacks we've seen so far. The layout is crowded with steep, narrow stairs to navigate between process areas. There's a large, elaborate touch screen that monitors everything in the stills, but doesn't control anything. Our tour guide has recently been reading up on bourbon and wants to do a distillery tour in the States. Given that, unlike other Islay distilleries, Bunnahabhain ages the vast majority of their stock in sherry casks instead of bourbon casks, it was interesting to find the most knowledgeable and interested person on the subject here. She said she read that bourbon distillers were going to start using barrels twice instead of once. I will have to remember to look into that when we get back. That would certainly change a lot of the emphasis of the tours.

Caol Ila is owned by Diageo (who also own Lagavulin and Port Ellen). We weren't sure if we were going to get the tour as Dot hadn't had any luck getting anyone on the phone to set one up. Fortunately, there was just enough room in the next tour when we arrived. We spent a pretty long time in the reception area, but it had started to really come down and I didn't want to do that particular drive in the rain more times than I had to. Our tour guide was from New Zealand and is the first person we've met who is desperate to get off the island. Her grandfather had worked at Caol Ila prior to it's rebuilding in the 70's. On this tour, I actually remembered that my digital camera does video and took a few seconds at some stages. At the end of the tour, they poured an unpeated 8, the 12, the 18, and a cask strength one only sold at the distillery. All of them were good, but, unsurprisingly, the cask strength was our favorite. The variety available is somewhat surprising given that the overwhelming majority of their product goes to blending (Johnnie Walker) and isn't even barreled on Islay. They actually currently store more casks of Lagavulin on site than their own.

We spent the afternoon admiring the beauty of Port Ellen's bay one last time, with an occasional warm up stop in a bar before returning to the White Hart for one last meal. They had a wonderful fire going in the lounge and, starting with us, everyone who came in wanted to sit there instead of the restaurant for dinner. Now we're back in the room unwinding with the last of the Caol Ila we got a few days ago and preparing for the next leg of our tip.