Islay distillers: A singular vision
Distillers on Islay are harnessing the concept of terroir to make exciting single-malt whiskies using locally grown barley and traditional methods. Fiona Rintoul looks at the trend.
There’s no better place to feel the pulse of the Scotch whisky industry than on the Isle of Islay. Dubbed ‘the Queen of the Hebrides’ because of its rugged beauty and fertile farming land, Islay is the spiritual home of Scotch. Bowmore, founded in 1779, vies for the title of oldest whisky distillery in Scotland, and illicit moonshine was distilled in the bays at Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg long before that – some say as far back as the mediaeval Lordship of the Isles, which was centred on Islay.
Were you to take Scotch whisky’s pulse on this bonniest of islands, you would find an industry where expensive single malts are thriving as cheaper blends do less well.
“The single-malt sector is increasing as more consumers turn to malts rather than blends,” says Anthony Wills, founder and managing director of Kilchoman, a small farm distillery near the end of a winding single-track road that leads to the great Atlantic-facing sweep of Machir Bay on Islay’s west coast. “The blended sector is very competitive and is driven by price, whereas this isn’t the case with malts.”
Kilchoman exemplifies this trend. When it opened in 2005 it was the first new distillery on Islay for 125 years. Some thought its founders were mad. How could a small, independent newcomer hope to compete with such iconic brands and Laphroaig and Lagavulin, backed, respectively, by Beam Suntory and Diageo?
Financial difficulties in the early days seemed to prove the naysayers right. But the artisanal distillery has found a place for itself in a mature market with a small production of high-quality spirit that doesn’t carry an age statement. For context, Caol Ila, Diageo’s workhorse on Islay, produces as much spirit in a week as Kilchoman does in a year. A bottle of Kilchoman rarely retails for less than £45, and some of the distillery’s specialist expressions cost much more.
According to Wills, the key to Kilchoman’s success is its difference. “You have to have a different story to tell,” he says.
In a market that generally prizes maturity, Kilchoman has become recognised for quality at a relatively young age. The signature Machir Bay expression is created from three-, four- and five-year-old spirit. With this and and other expressions that don’t carry an age statement, such as the 100% Islay and the ex-sherry-cask-matured Loch Gorm, Kilchoman has achieved double-digit growth figures each year that it has been selling whisky.
But high-quality younger spirit is just part of Kilchoman’s difference. It has also reintroduced farm distilling to Islay – taking the industry back to its roots as a by-product of farming. Artisanship is an important part of its farm ethos, and Kilchoman doesn’t use computers. The production is all done by hand.
‘We are showcasing how whisky-making was done years ago,’ says Wills.
In line with this, Kilchoman uses barley grown on Islay in part of its production. As the distillery has its own small malting floor and peat-fired kiln, this means that its 100% Islay expression is the only single malt produced on the island where the entire barley-to-bottle production process is completed in-house. Neighbouring Bruichladdich, which pioneered the use of Islay barley in modern whisky production, doesn’t have a malting floor and instead uses the Diageo-owned Port Ellen Maltings on the island.
Wherever it is malted, the use of locally grown barley in whisky production on Islay has become a trope for the industry’s direction since its 1990s’ renaissance after the disastrous 1980s’ whisky slump that nearly killed off Ardbeg and Bruichladdich. The latter first started working with Islay farmers to grow barley locally in 2003. Nowadays, roughly a quarter of the 1,200 tonnes of barely it uses annually is grown on the island, and it works with 15 local farmers.
Some of them, such as James Brown of Octomore farm, have become rather famous as a result. Brown’s farm has given its name to an entire range of Bruichladdich whiskies: the super- heavily peated Octomore range, which complements the unpeated Bruichladdich and the heavily peated Port Charlotte ranges.
Authentic ingredients
These are strong, expensive whiskies, bottled at up 59.9% ABV and sometimes even more. It’s all part of a movement in the whisky industry on Islay that prioritises authentic ingredients and craft, allowing the distilleries to create specialist single malts with a high price tag and a certain cult appeal.
Like Kilchoman, Bruichladdich, which was brought back from the dead in 2000 by Mark Reynier and Simon Coughlin of Murray McDavid, eschews computers. The original weighing machine dates from 1881 when the distillery was first founded by the Harvey Brothers, and weights are chalked up on a blackboard in imperial measures.
But what Bruichladdich is showcasing at its white-harled lochside plant with woodwork painted in its signature turquoise is not farm distilling but industrial whisky-making in the Victorian style. Bruichladdich today is little changed from when the Harvey whisky dynasty built it in the late 19th century with the intention of revolutionising whisky-making on Islay at a time when the advent of the Clyde puffer had allowed new markets to be reached and production to expand through the use of coal to fire the stills.
Ironically, it was the distillery’s subsequent neglect that allowed Bruichladdich’s rescuers to find its difference and turn it into the multi-million pound business it is today.
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‘The reason we have this Victorian equipment is because the distillery was never invested in,’ says Adam Hannett, Bruichladdich’s head distiller. ‘The lovely thing about that is that we still have the option to make whisky this way.’
Under Mark Reynier and Simon Coughlin, who had a background in the wine trade, Bruichladdich also tried to apply the wine-making term of terroir to whisky. It was far from alone. In the wider Scotch whisky industry, some believe that Scotch should, as a minimum, be made with Scottish barley and would like to see it adopting a Protected Geographical Identity (PGI) like Champagne. That is some way off and the Scottish parliament has thrown out proposals to oblige whisky distillers to use barley grown in Scotland, but there is no doubt the concept of terroir resonates with consumers.
For Bruichladdich, the most obvious expression of its belief in terroir is its use of Islay-grown barley. But with its wet climate, Islay isn’t the most efficient place in the world to grow barley. You can expect to get about 350 litres of alcohol from a tonne of Islay barley compared with 450-500 litres from a tonne of barley grown on the drier east coast of Scotland. But Bruichladdich believes it’s worth doing because you get different flavours from barley grown on the island in fields fertilised by seaweed and buffeted by the sea air.
A subtler attachment to terroir is evident in the company’s investment in people. Partly because it does everything on the island, including bottling, Bruichladdich employs 65 staff on Islay, making it the largest private employer on the island.
“Financially, a lot of the things we do don’t make sense, but they are the right thing to do,” says Hannett.
At one level, however, these investments in terroir make perfect financial sense. Using Islay barley, investing in the local community and making whisky by hand have all helped to shape the hugely successful Bruichladdich brand that was purchased by Rémy Cointreau in 2012 for a cool £58 million.
Value of integrity
Of course, the newer Islay distilleries are not alone in understanding the value of integrity. Ancient dank maturation warehouses by the sea are preferred by many to slicker facilities in Glasgow. Laphroaig and Bowmore maintain traditional malting floors, although they could have all their barley malted in Port Ellen. Both believe the portion of barley they malt themselves creates their spirits’ defining flavours – not least because they use hand-cut peats in the kilns.
‘You want a cold smoke, so the barley absorbs it more,’ explains Arthur Holyoake, Laphroaig’s maltman. ‘Machine-cut peat is compressed and loses its moisture. Laphroaig cuts its peat by hand to keep the moisture and achieve that cool smoke.’
Investment in the Ileach, who are such an important part of their island’s spirits, takes many forms. Next door to Bowmore distillery sits a leisure centre housed in the former Warehouse No. 3. It was gifted to the local community by Bowmore in the early 1980s. Today, the building, its swimming pool and showers are heated by warm water from Bowmore’s condensers – a project that won the distillery a Green Apple award in 2004.
The Islay distilleries have always made excellent whisky, but there is no doubt that the emphasis on traditional processes and ingredients has increased over the past two decades. This can be seen in Bunnahabhain’s introduction of non-chill-filtration across its entire range in 2010, in Bowmore’s investment in casks or in the re-introduction of Islay barley. Tellingly, the two new distilleries planned on the island at Gartbreck and Ardnahoe both intend to use Islay barley – and Gartbreck plans to heat its stills with a live flame.
This in turn has spawned a growing range of specialist Islay malts, from unpeated Caol Ila to peated Bunnahabhain to the special editions released by each distillery annually for Fèis Ìle – the annual Islay Festival of Music and Malt. These satisfy an increasingly discerning and price-insensitive consumer.
Where Islay leads, others follow. The new distillery on the Isle of Harris is exporting Harris peat to the maltings it uses on the mainland, while the new Raasay distillery aims to produce handcrafted whiskies that bring the Raasay terroir to life. Bruichladdich’s marketing slogan of ‘we believe terroir matters’ has found many adherents.
Fiona Rintoul has just written a book to celebrate the whiskies of Islay and Jura, and the islands that shaped them. Called Whisky Island, the hardback book profiles all eight active distilleries on Islay, and contains over 180 photographs, some of which we have featured in this article.
Excellent article outlining some of the pertinent differences between Islay distilleries. Just a couple of points on Bruichladdich, the distillery uses a maltster in Inverness called Bairds. Their ability to malt small batches of barley and trace the origins carefully were just some of the reasons Bruichladdich chose to work with them and not the Diageo owned maltings.
The tonnage of Islay grown barley is at around 1200-1300 tonnes this year. However, this is around 25-30% of the quantity needed to produce at the distillery and is not the overall tonnage used annually.
Additionally, I’ve never heard of any distilled getting yields of between 450-500 bulk litres of alcohol per tonne. The figures for Scottish barley are much more likely to sit around 400-420 for mainland barley and much much lower for Islay grown barley. The challenges to growth on the island include damage from geese and deer as well as a high nitrogen content, not just the rain and lack of sunshine.