In a Kildalton state of mind.

I had been looking forward to today. While I like all the Islay distilleries, I've noticed a particular predilection for the ones along the Kildalton coast. Those are Ardbeg, Laphroaig, and Lagavulin. Today we visited and toured the later two.

Before arriving, I had read that if you only get to tour one distillery on the island, choose Bowmore or Laphroaig because the are the only two that still do some of their own malting. Unfortunately the Bowmore tour didn't work out for us...but we got to tour Laphroaig. And what a tour it was.

By malting, I mean that Laphroaig still seeps, germinates, turns, smokes, and dries it's own barley. At least some of it. I think they only malt about 20% of the barley they need. The remainder comes from the maltings at Port Ellen that also supplies the rest of the island. It should be noted that Port Ellen malts each distilleries barley to their individual specifications, so it's not like Laphroaig gains anything by doing it themselves. They mostly malt a percentage of their own to keep the full process of distilling alive at the distillery.

Our tour guide had worked at the distillery for some 25 or 30 years. He intimately knew everything that went on in the process. He started by showing us the malting floors.



This is where they spread out the barley once they soak it for awhile to trick it into thinking it's time to grow. They have to get the barley to start germinating because it starts to convert the starch in the grain into sugar, and they need the sugar to fuel the fermentation for the yeast. The trick is to control the germination and not let it get too far out of hand. If it goes to far they will basically end up with barley sod. To keep it from actually growing they keep turning the barley over every four hours. That's back breaking work. There are a few modern tools they use to help lighten the load, but it's still labor intensive (and the reason most distilleries just buy the grains pre-malted).

Once the barley has germinated they smoke it in peat smoke. They have to move the grains into another room situated over a peat fire and they let it smoke for about 13 hours. Our guide told us that the grains are still damp at this point and that helps them absorb the peat flavor. This step is one of the key factors that gives Islay Scotch's their distinctive flavors. Here's a pic of how dense the peat smoke is in the smoking room (this room smelled awesome).



Laphroaig also harvests it's own peat to burn to create smoke. The tour guide said that they preferred to throw damp peat on the fire because it smoked more, and the goal was to create smoke not heat. Again, another good smelling room.



After smoking, the barley is dried using warm air. That takes another 18 hours. After that, the rest of the tour was pretty similar to other tours we've been on, because once you have malted barley the process is pretty much the same. We got to taste the wort and the pot wash. This time instead of using our fingers we were provided with little tasting cups. To retain an element of excitement the vats were left open long enough to set off all the CO2 alarms (evidently the fermenting yeast was belching serious amounts CO2 into the room).

After the tour we got to retire to their swank lounge and taste a wee dram. Being that Dawn joined the Friends of Laphroaig club last year they presented her with a certificate and a small bottle of Laphroaig. Here she is relaxing in the lounge.



In the afternoon we toured Lagavulin. At first I was concerned the tour wasn't going to be very informative because our tour guide looked younger than us. It turns out that she knew a great deal about their distillery and was able to easily answer all the questions thrown at her. I was once again impressed with how open all the distilleries are on their tours. Especially in a distillery like Lagavulin that has evolved into a factory more than it was laid out and planned to be one. There are a lot of stairs, a lot of buttons out in the open, and a lot of tight unsupervised places to hang out in. This sort of access wouldn't fly in the US.

Here's a quick shot of their stills.



After the Lagavulin tour we headed towards Finalaggan to see the seat of power for the Lord of the Isles (circa 16th century). On the way there we passed the Islay Ale brewing company so I got to drop in and say high to them. Finalaggan is basically the remains of a town built on an island in a loch. It seems that everyone on Islay has some sort of castle ruins or stone circle in their backyards. Turning the corner and seeing something breath taking is kind of par for the course around here. This was no exception. Plus the whole place is very laid back about tourist. If you want to see something then tromp on out there and have a look around. The whole island seems to operate on the golden rule... do whatever you want as long as you aren't being an ass.

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.

It's a narrow road to take.

I think a word needs to be said about the driving on Islay. By and large Dawn as done all the driving on the island. I did one tiny jaunt this evening, just to get a taste, but I'm happy to let her continue to hone her island driving skills. Here and there there are two lane roads. Mostly along the (relatively) heavily traveled section between Lagavulin and Bowmore. It's hard to describe the roads everywhere else. They look like they were paved with the intention that golf carts would be the primary source of transportation. Basically the rest of the island is paved with single lane roads and every now and again there will be a widened bulge in the road. If you happen to see a car coming the other way then one of you should try and get to a bulge to give the other one room to pass. That is, if you get to see the other car coming. The roads were also built with a quantity of blind turns, leaps of faith, and steep hill tops that can only be indicative of a place where you assume no one else is coming.

Racing down a one lane road over a blind hill top without knowing if someone is doing the same thing on the other side is...uh...exhilarating? Dawn seems to think so.

Did I say racing? Why yes I did. That's because speed limits are only posted in towns. Actually the beginning of the speed limit is posted (30 kph) and the end of the speed limit is also posted...so you don't accidentally continue to let the man tell you how fast to drive. Outside of towns as far as we can tell its a free for all.

Well at least the cars are really tiny here... wrong. SUV's, pickup trucks, semis, buses, and small European cars are all at home here. I think the number “American sized” cars here is due to the fact that, unlike suburbia, you might actually get stuck in a peat bog trying to give way so another car can pass.

Insane as it sound the whole system works fairly well. We don't often see other people on the roads, and when we do they almost always wave to us. You pass someone coming the other way, you wave to them. They stop at a bulge, they wave to you. You stop at a bulge, they wave to you. I'm beginning to really dig the philosophy of small island life which seems to center around: there aren't many people here, we all know each other, so let's be a pleasant as we can to each other. Rude actions can't be covered in a cloak of anonymity.

This philosophy extends well pass the driving situation in to all facets of life. Its no joke that this experience has stirred strong desires to escape the world and give island life a try. If only I didn't hate boats.

Jura-nimo

We drove out to Port Askaig today to get a better look at Jura and the rather impressive peaks (Paps) we won't be going to this trip. Bill has determined that the distance the ferry has to travel might be manageable so maybe next time. It's about 4 minutes, according to our hosts. They also told Bill that once a year, there's a race over the mountains followed by a dance. The record for the race is around 4 hours and 20 minutes. I imagine it would take me about 10 hours to cover that much ground.

While we were there, we stopped in at the local hotel bar, which had a pretty amazing collection of bottles, many only for display. We split a glass of 15 year old Jura as that was our view. The bartender had just gotten to the island the same day we did, having traveled from Slovakia, flying through Heathrow to Glasgow and taking the bus to the ferry. His English comprehension is a little shaky (though, honestly, better than some graduate students I've met), and he said that Heathrow wasn't bad, but in Glasgow's airport, he could barely understand anything. Bill, ever interested in figuring out how to get to live here asked a few questions and found out that he pretty much got the job because the cook was a friend of his who has been here for about 4 months when a position opened. She gave him a call and told him to come to Islay. All in all, a fun little trip which left us with a better idea of how far away things on that side of Islay are. We'll be back for at least on distillery on that side of the island in a couple of days.

We again got to hear Iain Banks talk today. His previous editor, who is apparently retired and not actually dead, though Bill and I both remember Banks referring to his death, introduce him today. He forgot to bring his copy of Matter to read from and spoke off the cuff about science fiction writing, authors and books he's enjoyed, and the Culture. He went on a long tangent about comic books and graphic novels, which he has no intention of doing, but seemed open to the idea of having his previous works adapted to. He also talked about some of the really awful stuff he'd written long before he got the Wasp Factory published. It was great fun for me as a fan, and Bill, in spite of having read none of his stuff (not even Raw Spirit), enjoyed it as well. He flipped my copy of Look to Windward over a couple of times trying to remember if he'd seen that edition before while signing it. I really wish I'd brought my copy of Raw Spirit.

After the talk, we decided that it was really silly of us to not have a bottle of scotch open in our room to enjoy while winding down in the evenings and typing up these posts. Our first stop was the local co-op for some accompaniments followed by a drive back to Bowmore to visit the Islay Whisky Shop, which has bottles in a variety of sizes. We settled on a 350mL Caol Ila, which is not quite half gone now.

Before retiring for the evening, we walked a little ways down the road from our B&B,turned down a road towards the coast and found the ruins of a castle overlooking Lagavulin. This place is awesome.

The Bowmore Plan

The plan was to get up this morning and take the Bowmore distillery tour. That was the plan. Bowmore gets the honor of having the oldest distilling license on Islay. Of course, lots of people were distilling before that time (they were called black pots) Bowmore was just the first to go legit (in 1779). It's the one distillery on the island that we didn't have a tour reservation for. It's supposedly the most visited distillery in Islay. We were told that it's the only one that didn't need reservations. That wasn't the case today. All the tours for the morning were full and the afternoon tours conflicted with the book festival lecture we wanted to hear. Bummer. As a runner up prize the nice lady at Bowmore shut down the visitor center for a few minutes (locked the door, hung a sign, and everything) so she could set up a DVD version of the tour on a projector in their meeting room for us to watch. She even poured us a dram of whiskey to help ease the sting of missing the actual tour.

The DVD was super informative. We actually really enjoyed it. That's probably because it delved into little details that wouldn't be practical on a tour. A real tour is mostly about pointing to machines and telling people what they do. The DVD spent more time covering the process more thoroughly . It filled in a few holes in our understanding. We probably know enough now to set up a black pot in our backyard.

After the pseudo-tour we walked around Bowmore the town. It's the largest town on Islay, which means it has two busy streets. The main street is pretty awesome because at the top of the hill it has a round church built in 1769. The church is round so there are no corners for the devil to hide in. At the bottom of the hill is the distillery. In preparing for our trip I read in the Ralph Steadman book that David and Karen gave me that Bowmore is built so that God lives at the top of the hill and the devil at the bottom.



We decided to drive up to Port Askaig to see what was there. It's pretty much the last town we haven't visited on the island. Port Askaig turned out to be a pretty small town, even for Islay standards. Perhaps we missed part of it, as it's actually folded into the side of a cliff. There is a ferry terminal there that will take people and cars across to Jura, the island next door. Originally I was against all ferry rides for this trip. Now that I understand how close Jura is to Islay I think I'd be willing to take the ride. I've been told it's about a 4 minute ride and it looks like it could easily be canoed.



The mountains in the picture have been driving us crazy this entire trip. You can see them from lots of different places on Islay. We kept thinking that they were somewhere on the island, but we could never quiet figure out where they were on the map. Now we understand that they're on the island next door (Jura), but it's so close that you can't tell that from most of Islay. They're actually called the Paps of Jura (I'm told because they kind of looks like paps...but don't know what a pap is). I'm also told that once a year there is a race that's 16 miles long where you can run up and down all of them. Oh boy! The record is some astonishing 4 hours and 20 minutes (or so I'm told). Afterward there is supposedly a dance. Our hosts told me that everyone is so exhausted (and/or drunk) after the dance that people collapse and pretty much sleep right were they fall. Some times you can't leave the area in a car because people will be sleeping all over the place. They refer to it as “good times.”

This last photo is of Lagavulin. Notice that white building up and to the right of the distillery? That's our B&B.



The really surprising thing about this photo is I was standing in the ruins of a castle when I took it! And trust me, they really are ruins... more of a pile of rubble. But you can kind of make out that there was a structure here at one point. I did some researching in a book I have and it says that the Castle Dunyvaig used to guard the entrance to Lagavulin bay and fell in 1615! The amazing thing is we just walked down this nondescript road (at first we thought it was some sort of driveway) and found a castle and an amazing view of Lagavulin. It's really cool knowing that anyone who has a photo or has done a painting of the distillery (like Ralph Steadman) essentially had to do the same thing and make the same discovery.

2nd Day on Islay

I took lots a beautiful pictures today that I'm not going to post. Partly because my EEE laptop is ill-suited for photo management and partly because I'm already sitting on a bunch of photos I need to post from yesterday and I don't want to spend two hours of my vacation fooling around with Blogger next time I find WiFi.

Anywho, here's a quick sample of some of the things we did today. We got to listen to Iain Banks speak. I know who he is, but I can't say I've read his books. As such, I wasn't sure I'd dig this part of the trip. Turns out the Iain is a really entertaining (and fidgety) speaker and I really enjoyed his speech. Dawn got him to sign stuff for her.



At Bruichladdich Dawn got to fill her own bottle of 25 year old whiskey directly from the cask. I didn't enjoy this tour as much as Ardbeg. Part of that was because the tour person wasn't as knowledgeable, part of it was she kept on harping on the investing potential of buying whiskey futures, and part of it was we were taking the tour with the Swiss Photo Team. There is a group of six Swiss (we assume) men cavorting around the island, each carrying digital cameras the put my new one to shame. Everywhere we go we run into them. I didn't enjoy taking a tour with them because I was competing with six other people to take decent shots of the process. I really didn't want photos with big Swiss guys in them so I ended up taking less photos.



During the tour Dawn noticed a barrel from one of our favorite bourbon distilleries. Evidently Buffalo Trace ships their used barrels to Scotland. Maybe I'll email this to Buffalo Trace when we get back...



We also did a lot of walking around the island today. Lots of gorgeous landscape shots. Here's one of Dawn walking along the tiny concrete bridge to the lighthouse across from Port Ellen. This is the kind of access that you can't get in a more litigious society, like the USA, for fear that tourist would be swept out to sea (indeed I harbored that fear when I walked out there).

Whisky, Winding Roads, and Wild Animals

We had two items on today's agenda. The first was visiting the Islay Book Festival, which coincided with our trip. I planned this trip around Hamlet tickets. I'd actually originally purchased them for mid August, but discovered that Laphroaig was closed for the month of August for maintenance. I then purchased another set for early September. In trying to figure out what we would do here besides distillery tours, I found out about the book festival, which is a fund raiser for the Port Ellen Elementary School. This year, they have Iain Banks as a speaker on both Saturday and Sunday.

Today he talked about where his ideas came from, which was actually more of a discussion about what he thinks a writer is and how he got into the industry with a few sources for specific ideas within specific books and a lot of humor. He also talked about working with editors and how he and his previous, now deceased editor, used to fight out his novels over a bottle of Scotch. He didn't stay still the entire time. I actually took a couple of videos with my camera just to illustrate this. No idea when I'll get a chance to post them. He also said that parts of the Crow Road miniseries that the BBC did are better than the book. Disc 1 is currently sitting at our house. Following each author's talk, the author signs books. I of course wanted to support the local school system and purchased 3 books for him to sign. He signed the scifi ones as Iain M. Banks and the fiction as Iain Banks. Tomorrow he's going to be talking about Matter, which I finished during out layover in Glasgow. Maybe I'll also get that signed. Or buy a few more to get signed. Or both.

Next was a tour at Bruichladdich, but we had a couple of hours to kill, so we made our way to Kilchoman, which is the newest distillery and is still aging it's first release. Bill has read that they're intending to do everything on the premises, including growing and malting the barley, and that their annual yield will be what Caol Ila produces in a week. Getting there was a lot of fun if you were me and horrifying if you were Bill. It's a one lane road through the hills with winding, but not really sharp turns. I was barreling along at all of 40 mph, enjoying the roller coaster while Bill fought desperately to keep down his breakfast. We only stopped in briefly and picked up a sample of their “New Spirit” distilled on 23-03-08 and bottled on 08-05-08. During the drive back, Bill declared that part of the island dead to him.

Then, Bruichladdich. Their tour is more of a sales pitch than a history lesson. I thought it was interesting because it filled in a lot of the blanks from their website. Bruichladdich is all about small batch experiments and selling futures. You can buy your own barrel for only ₤1,100 and discuss with “Jim” how you'd like it to be barreled. If you ask enough questions, they'll also mention a ₤20 storage fee each year for the first 10, which goes up after that, but I don't know by how much, and that the purchase doesn't include the excise tax, or bottles, or shipping, but they provide all of that for a seperate fee, which doesn't include actually doing the bottling or selling, that's your problem. If I had the money and a kid, I might consider that an interesting college fund. As it is, it's just interesting. The tour guide also said that they don't get their malt from Port Ellen, but buy smaller batches, some from other Scottish sources. They age in all kinds of different barrels, though primarily bourbon, which may explain the caramel notes I get out of both the Bruichladdichs I had tasted. When showing us the variety of barrels, one in particular caught my eye: Buffalo Trace. I was there last summer (2007); that's the distillery tour I've been on the second half of. I am really glad I caught that half, though, as so far tours here have stopped with the distilling process. What I got from the Buffalo Trace Tour was an idea of the different barrel aging regimes and the bottling process. One of the items available in th gift shop was a 25 year old barrel that you could pour your own bottle out of. Yeah, totally did that. I suppose now our luggage only has room for 3 more bottles from the island. We also met an English woman on the tour who didn't know anything about whiskey and was on Islay because her ancestors had lived here.

After Bruichladdich, we headed further down the road towards Port Charlotte just to see what there was to see. We picked up a hitchhiker along the way, but only because it was that same woman. We headed further down the road to get a good look at a light house on a nearby island that was designed by Robert Lewis Stevenson's grandfather. Since we were already doing light houses, we decided to try out the walk to Singing Sands, which is a beach reputed to sing in the wind and have a good view of the light house near Port Ellen. It had been described as a 1.5 hour walk (the monument was described as 2 hours).

There was a sign that said Singing Sands, Lighthouse, and Farm and a parking lot right after the turn. You can see a beach from the parking lot, but it didn't look like it would take 45 minutes to get to. We went and took a look anyway. There are the remains of an old building at one edge of the beach, which include steps leading up the side of a cliff and a path into the woods. We followed that for a little while and it was not unlike walking through what Fable had promised to be. When we got back to the beach, there were bulls on it. We had seen a car on the road past the parking lot, which looked questionable, and decided that meant we were allowed to drive on it. It very quickly went from questionable to full of potholes and bulls and then gravel and mud. Eventually, we saw a sign that said “Last Parking Area” and decided that maybe we should park there. The light house was an easy walk. On the way, we passed a sign for the walk to Singing Sands which looked far too ambitious for only having a couple hours of good light left. The lighthouse is accessed via a narrow concrete path with no railings (except on a metal bridge between two outcrops of rock. From there, the view of Port Ellen is lovely. Also, Bill had a eureka moment and proclaimed that they malted the barly in the old Port Ellen distillery. I did not throw him into the sea. On the walk back to the car, we startled a small heard of mountain goats. Most wend up the side of a rock outcropping, but the largest ran into the road, getting between us and our car. Eventually, he decided we weren't a threat and hoped down to the beach so we could pass.

For having two things on the agenda, we did a lot today.