The untamed spirit of Islay

We had been driving for about 15 minutes on this remote country road in Scotland when Jackie Thomson, Ardbeg Distillery Visitor’s Center manager, lifts her hand from the wheel and waves to the driver coming from the opposite direction.

It’s only the fourth car we’ve passed in quarter of an hour, and each time she gives a little wave. I couldn’t help but ask, “Is Islay so small that you know everybody around?”

Jackie laughs and says, yes, pretty much. “Do you also wave to fellow drivers in Manila?”

It’s my turn to laugh — real hard. “Metro Manila has a population of 20 million and terrible traffic every day with the worst drivers,” I say. “We do this instead…” and raise my middle finger.

Islay is very small in population (about 3,330) and smaller still is the settlement of Ardbeg, located on the south coast of the island with only a few hundred people. This is where the famous Ardbeg whisky has been produced since 1815.

It feels like a community here — a tightly knit community of Scots whose lives revolve around whisky, fishing, and Islay’s waters.

I realize this when Jackie and I go back to the small one-airline airport to retrieve my lost luggage the day after I arrived and 12 hours before I was leaving.

The girl at the airport says, “Are you Tanya?” I nod and she gives me my suitcase and then disappears behind a door.

I turn to Jackie and say, “That’s it? I don’t have to show her my passport or an ID or sign anything?”

Jackie smiles, “This is Islay.”

And so it is — Islay with its untamed wildlife, mountain ranges and Gulf Stream, and its own unhurried rhythm.

At the distillery where we have a tasting and a tour, she says in a hushed tone, “They say the tradition of distilling comes from Ireland, but we say that quietly. Ireland is so close that there was a natural passage to bring it to Islay. Through the centuries, people saw Islay as a land of opportunity. They came from Ireland and from mainland Scotland, they grew crops, they fished, they kept black cattle, there was spinning and weaving, and a little bit of mining.”

Part of 18th-century Islay’s lore was this intricate tradition of illicit distilling when they hid the whisky everywhere from the taxman. “It was very difficult for the excise man to come to Islay on a boat because there were lookouts who would warn the distilleries and the smugglers would signal from the hills with hurricane lamps to warn other smugglers, who’d then come to the beach and take away the black casts to the mainland. There are stories of funerals being used to hide the whisky, sometimes there was no body in the coffin but there was whisky because an excise man would never think to disrupt a funeral or question the priest.”

Today, such great adventures in the whisky trade no longer exist, but Islay has preserved its distinction as having the most number of distilleries in proportion to its land size and population.

The island has eight working distilleries and one of the oldest is Ardbeg’s, which was begun in 1815 by John McDougall. “Within a few decades, Ardbeg Distillery had become the focal point of a thriving village and on balmy evenings, locals would gather by the harbour to sing, accompanied by mouth organs, pipes and a few drams. By 1887, Ardbeg had become the most prolific distillery on Islay and was producing over one million liters of its hand-crafted whisky per year. Following hard times in the years immediately after 1922, it became very prosperous in the 1960s and the whisky made at Ardbeg in the 1970s is still revered by collectors and aficionados.  Despite this, the distillery’s fortunes dwindled and it closed in 1981.”

It reopened in 1987 and began producing again its smoky whisky but on a smaller scale.

A decade later, in 1997, Glenmorangie — Scotland’s favorite single malt whisky — bought Ardbeg for seven million pounds — two million for the land, which included a 600-acre farm, and five million pounds for the casks in the warehouse. 

Glenmorangie invested in the restoration of Ardbeg’s buildings and machinery and turned it around. The cult whisky was back and its cult following even more ardent. Its loyal following and a new generation of whisky drinkers loved its peaty taste, its singular identity and its tone of voice.

 “It was serendipitous when we reopened because Ardbeg hit the ground just when Islay malts were very popular again. In the ‘90s, Ardbeg was casting off the old mindsets about whiskies, that you have to have a lot of money to have single malt, that the older it was the better, and emerging markets were starting to open.”

The first whisky they bottled was a 17-year-old, which is so iconic if you brought out a bottle there will definitely be gasping from the guests. . But you had this gap. In the ‘70s, there was production but quite sporadic.

Because of the gap years between its closing and reopening in the ‘80s when there was no whisky being produced, it had to wait a few years to bottle a 10-year-old when it reopened in 1997.

“We did something very clever though,” says Jackie. “We had the old 10, but when the distillery closed in ‘81 to ‘89, we had to wait till 2000 to bottle a 10-year-old. What we did in the interim was a clever series of bottling, leading to the 10. They were called For Discussion, 6 Years Old, Very Young, Still Young, Almost There, Renaissance and then the 10-year-old in 2000.

“A decade before, people would have been more skeptical but because they had more knowledge and a thirst for more, it was the right time to put a 6 Years Old on the market. It’s not that people’s palettes have changed, it was about being so interested they wanted to know more.”

It was also in 2000 that they started the Ardbeg Committee with a few members in Islay and today, they have more than 120,000 members in over 130 countries. “When we brought out new whiskies, we would have a different version for committee members and ask them if they wanted to buy a bottle before we put it out for general release and they were very vocal about their opinions.”

Often called “the ultimate Islay single malt whisky,” Ardbeg is the most highly awarded of all Islay whiskies. Made with the purest, freshest water from Ardbeg’s source — Loch Uigeadail — Ardbeg is revered as the peatiest, smokiest and most complex of all Islay malts.  But it is also supremely balanced and its renowned taste contains a singular mix of distinctive sweet notes. This “peaty paradox” is created by the use of a purifier — the unique method of distillation, used only by Ardbeg.

Today, it has three core expressions or qualities: the multi-awarded Ardbeg 10 Years Old, introduced in 2000, and named World Whisky of the Year by Jim Murray. It has a burst of intense smoky fruit and peat; a wave of brine infused with smooth buttermilk, ripe bananas and currants, and finishes with tarry espresso, aniseed, toasted almonds and traces of soft barley and fresh pear.

 “If perfection on the palate exists, this is it,” said international whisky expert Jim Murray when describing Ardbeg 10 Years Old in The Complete Book of Whisky.

Second is Ardbeg Uigeadail and named after Ardbeg’s water source, Loch Uigeadail, the lake above the Ardbeg Distillery, some 600 feet above sea level. Like Ardbeg 10 Years Old, Uigeadail has a much revered, highly distinctive taste, bringing together Ardbeg’s traditional deep, smoky notes with the luscious, raisin-like tones of old ex-Oloroso sherry casks and ex-Bourbon casks.

And the third is Ardbeg Corryvreckan, introduced in 2009 and named from the famously treacherous water whirlpool that lies to the north of Islay. The whisky is a swirling torrent of deep, peaty, peppery taste lurking beneath the surface of this beautifully balanced dram.

One of the best stories that Jackie tells me is about a bottle that was the result of an accident that turned serendipitous. It was also the most contentious Ardbeg.

Someone in the distillery accidentally piped some 12-Year-Old Glen Moray with some 20-Year-Old old Ardbeg. The two were supposed to go into separate pipes with the Ardbeg that was mixed supposed to supply the 17-Year-Old Ardbeg. 

Jackie said, “But it was so good that we couldn’t let it go to waste. And so we called the bottle Serendipity, 12-Year-Old Blended Whisky and offered it to committee members in the form of a booklet sent out on April 1, 2005. We said, we made a mistake, would you like to buy a bottle? Because it was a blend, some people on the committee were horrified, they felt we were going backwards from being single malt but they also didn’t know if we were serious because it was April Fool’s Day. But buy it they did! And to this day people are asking if we still have some of it. No, we don’t anymore!”

Jackie says because Ardbeg is so loved, so unique, it has always provoked debate. “Ardbeg is quirky, it’s intelligent and that’s what makes it fun.”

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Ardbeg 10 Years Old, Ardbeg Corryvreckan and Ardbeg Uigeadail are available in leading supermarkets, wine shops, hotels and bars.   

Follow the author on Instagram and Twitter @iamtanyalara. Check out her travel blog at www.findingmyway.net.