Ardbeg to be different

We went on our first distillery tour today at Ardbeg.



I have a pretty good understanding on what distilling entails, but this was my very first distillery tour ever so I didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised that Ardbeg takes the approach that the distilling process is basically the same the world over so we won't bore you with all the details that are boiler plate distilling. Instead they focused on our particular history.

Ardbeg has been distilling in one form or another for a couple hundred years. I thought the 1970's where when the history got real interesting. During the 70's the whiskey market was doing very well, but Ardbeg was still distilling in a very primitive fashion. Ardbeg employed 90+ workers to do all the manual labor of harvesting peat, malting barley, etc. The workers and their families lived on the premises and Ardbeg was basically it's own village with a school, shops, and everything. They even employed multiple gardeners to grow vegetables and fish just to feed the workforce. This was back when the island had a lot more people on it. At one point Islay was home to fourteen thousand people. Now it is home to barely more than three thousand.

At the end of the seventies the bottom of the whiskey market dropped out. That's about the same time that wine started to become popular with the mass market. Ardbeg was shutdown and boarded up. The grounds started to deteriorate. In the late eighties it was bought by a whiskey company that used it to help make blended whiskeys. It eventually lost interest in the distillery because so much work and maintenance was needed due to its poor condition. The company started to knock all the buildings down and decided to level the entire site. At the last minute, in the 1998, it sold Ardbeg for 7 millions pounds to a smaller whiskey company that already owned a highland distillery and a speyside distillery. The warehouses still had barrels in them that had been aging since 70's. The old barrels ended up bringing in more than 5 million pounds when sold. Even still, the new company had to invest a lot of money into Ardbeg to renovate it.

The newer company introduced modern automation Ardbeg. Eventually the new company decided to get out of the whiskey business all together and sold all three of its distilleries to a French company for 300 million pounds in 2004.

Today the distilling operation is run by nine people. Six of them work in shifts to keep it going. They no longer harvest their own peat or do their own malting. The island now has a Maltings Plant in Port Ellen that supplies all of the island's distilleries with malted barley (which is also why Port Ellen smells like peaty-malted heaven). There are elevators to move malted barley around the distillery these days. One thing they haven't upgraded is their barley mill.



The mill was commissioned especially for the distillery and is over a hundred years old. At some point the wooden rollers were retrofitted to be stainless steel rollers, but other than that it has been unchanged. They have no spare mills, they don't even have spare parts for this mill. Once a year they shutdown to clean and oil the mill. They've had all the new pieces of modernized equipment break down on them since they reopened in 1998. The mill has never failed them.

After the barley is milled it moves to a series of barrels to soak. These are the largest barrels I've ever seen. They are two stories tall. I assume this is the sort of thing you need to make in order to receive the title “Master Cooper.”



Here is a photo of the grains in during their first soak.



We got to taste the wort during the second soak. I found it a little disconcerting that she instructed us to stick our finger in her little wort bucket to taste it. Even more disconcerting that she returned the bucket, contents and all, back into the giant barrel.

After the third soak the water is moved into the first still. Ardbeg's barrel capacity is larger than their still capacity, so they can only move half the contents at a time. While they've done some modernization, they haven't modernized everything. They gauge how much to move by shoving a stick into the giant barrel with a mark in the middle. When they see the mark they've pumped out half the barrel.



They use a two still process, once it condenses out of the first still it moves to the second. We're told that's pretty much how all Scotches are made.

At the very end we got to see the “spirit safe.”



During the late 1800's the government was trying to force all distillers to get licenses and start pay taxes for making whiskey. A lot of Scotsmen thought making whiskey was more of a birthright sort of thing so a lot of smuggling and cheating went on. The spirit safe was one of the measures that the government introduced because it helped them keep tabs on the process. I'll have to look up later what exactly it was suppose to prevent or enforce.

At this point we got to stick our finger in the final spirit before it was moved into a barrel. We all obliged. It takes three days to get from malted barley to spirit. It takes a minimum of three years of aging in barrels to legally be called a whiskey, but traditionally no self respecting distillery releases much before 10 years. Dawn mentioned how funny it was that someone would be tasting our fingers in 10 years time. Did I mention that Ardbeg was sold and reopened in 1998? Yeah, this is a big year for them. This is their first honest-to-god release since they reopened. Everything before this has been stuff from before they shutdown or early released stuff.

Our First Full Day on Islay

Here are a few of the photos I took on our walk to the American Monument on the south side of the island. I took quite of few photos during the walk. It was a real challenge to select just a few to post, not only because my EEE reminds me that it was not designed to process 12 mega pixel images, but because the whole walk was so damn beautiful.

Dawn in a field towards the beginning of our walk.



The way the green fields and cliffs and oceans comes together is just breath taking. The chilly morning breeze is bracing!



These cliffs are inhabited by sheep! This was just our first interaction with the islands sheep. They are all over the place on the east side of the island. Perhaps when we back home I'll go through my photos and post a “best of Islay sheep” photo collection.


I love this photo of Dawn on the southern tip of the island. It looks like she just finished conquering the island and trying to figure out what to do next.



I might not have climbed out to the very edge of the island, but at least I look dapper.



Here's Dawn sitting on the steps of the American Monument. It was erected to commemorate two ships with American soldiers that sunk off the point in 1918. I've actually seen quiet of few monuments to America as we've been traveling through England and Scotland. Evidently at one time we were well regarded over here.



Have I mentioned how freaking beautiful this place is yet?

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!

You SHOULD be jelious...

If you aren't already sad you're not here...you should be. It's awesome. Here's a map of the island with the distilleries on it.



In case you haven't guessed it, Dawn and I found a cybercafe on the island that has WiFi. Where doesn't have a cybercafe these days?

Dawn and I had an awesome dinner last night, I think she mentioned it. Let me take a moment to expound upon what they consider a pie here. They have re-prioritized the normal savory pie a bit. I had the steak pie and Dawn had the venison pie for dinner. What we got was a stew served in a generous puddle of gravy with a wedge of puff pastry on top. They were really good.

Dawn got to drink from a now defunct distillery... Happy Dawns.



Another surprising treat. This small island makes it's own ales as well. There are Islay Ales available at the pubs. They are bottle conditioned so you must be careful not to pour the sediment into your glass.

Islay drink to that.

It's beautiful here. Co-workers be warned, if they had any need for mechanical engineers here, I'd already have applied for positions, even at severely reduced pay.

Our flight last night was delayed, so we got in a little later than anticipated. It's light until after 8PM so there was still a few hours of light to get used to driving. The roads are narrow and winding and some are actually one lane and not just really narrow two lanes that we think should be one lane. In other words, like Ireland, but without massive stone walls to keep you on them. After stopping in at the B&B (which is one of the largest rooms I've stayed in at one, almost twice the space of the Salamander House), we went out for dinner at the White Hart Hotel where I had a venison pie and a glass of Port Ellen that constituted half of our bill. If you're up on Islay Scotch, you already know that Port Ellen is no longer an active distillery, so getting to taste it is quite a treat! If you're curious about the expense, I suggest you search for a bottle on E-bay.

This morning, with the help of a pamphlet with all the distillery tour times on it, I made a schedule of events for our week and annotated items we'd already made arrangements for so that the B&B could set up the rest of our distillery tours. Don, the English proprietor, looked at it and told me I spend too much time using a computer. It does look rather a lot like an outlook calendar. We're going to tour Ardbeg today after lunch. We're trying to get to the 7 active distilleries that we've tasted. There's a new one, and theres Jura a ferry ride away, but I couldn't fit anything else in. We'll just have to come back another time!

We were going to do some beach walking around Ardbeg, but since the tour doesn't start until 3, we decided to go on a longer stroll on Mull of Oa to see the American Monument, a monument dedicated to the American soldiers who had died off the coast on two separate occasions in 1918. Bill will post photos. The walk is a 2 mile circle. We took the cliff facing side on the way out, which worked well as the wind started to pick up as we made our way back through the fields. I can't describe and I'm not sure pictures can do justice to just how impressive and beautiful this island is.

We made it to Islay today.



It is rare that you are dumbstruck by the shear beauty of a place. The immense perfection renders the senses dumb and mute. The last time I can remember being so affected was driving through Ireland. This time my jaw dropped staring out the windows on the plane's descent. When we got the airport, a little one room affair, I as hoping up and down with anticipation. As Dawn drove us to the bed and breakfast I was scratching at the windows demanding to photograph every square inch. Trust me, the following photos taken from the car while driving around do NOT due the island justice. It's jaw dropping gorgeous.

On the way out of town

Simply put, Hamlet was awesome. I was especially impressed with how they were able to add a bunch of small interesting twists whilst staying true to the original play. The most obvious example would be playing around with the time era that the play takes placed in. The era was more modern than in the traditional play, with the cast wearing suits instead of medieval garb. This not only gave the play a slick hip feel, but also made it easier to distinguish the mood the clothing was trying to establish. I don't know much about medieval garb, nuances are lost, and it all looks funny to me. I do understand the difference between a business suit and a tuxedo and why one might choose to wear one or the other. In addition to business and formal wear the characters also wore jeans, t-shirts, blazers etc. The implications of the mood the clothes were trying to set were fairly straight-forward and obvious.

They also did a good job mixing modern and more traditional props throughout the entire play. Some characters carried guns, some carried swords or switchblades. A mix of flashlights and lanterns depending on what made the scene more visually interesting. The back of the stage had these large mirror panels and they came up with a number of fun ways to use the mirrors in surprising ways.

David Tennant is an exceptional comic actor and added a bit of levity to the play. I think this version of Hamlet was less sympathetic to Hamlet than most that I've seen. Sure, he's a son stuck in a moral dilemma of whether or not to avenge his murdered father, but he's also a spoiled rich prat screwing around with everyone else in the court while he's trying to make up his mind.

Absolutely the best play I've ever been to.