Mull was great however it lacked something. Namely, a high concentration of the world's greatest whisky distilleries. Enter the Isle of Islay.
Eight distilleries for a population of about three thousand people. By my calculations that's one distillery per 15 people. Brilliant!!
Whisky is an acquired taste. Whisky from Islay is sometimes a leap too far for even the most discerning of whisky drinkers. The reason being is that most single malts produced on Islay incorporate malt that has been kilned by burning peat cut from the peat bogs of Islay which results in a very distinct, extremely smokey style of whisky. Notes on the nose and palate from these whiskies regularly include iodine, medicine, band aids, like chowing down on the wrong end of a cigarette. Mmm...
Whisky is an acquired taste. Whisky from Islay is sometimes a leap too far for even the most discerning of whisky drinkers. The reason being is that most single malts produced on Islay incorporate malt that has been kilned by burning peat cut from the peat bogs of Islay which results in a very distinct, extremely smokey style of whisky. Notes on the nose and palate from these whiskies regularly include iodine, medicine, band aids, like chowing down on the wrong end of a cigarette. Mmm...
This is one of those circumstances in life where once you take that first step and fall for the intensely smokey whiskies of Islay there is no going back. Any future single malt without at least a hint of smoke will feel boring and bland, will lack guts and will basically taste inferior.
At times during these travels I've felt like we were cheating life and that surely we weren't awake. This was one of those times and the four nights on Islay were seriously dreamlike.
At this point it was time for me to relinquish the driving duties. I drove on Mull, Nix drives on Islay. Seemed fair to me. It also meant that the quality of conversation coming from the passenger's side went up a notch.
The best way to take in all Islay has to offer is tagging along on a few different tours.
First up was the Laphroaig Water to Whisky tour where we had lunch and a dram next to the water source,
cut our own peat (rewarded with a dram of course),
viewed the germinating grain
go from smoked malt
to a sloshy beer-like mixture
to the new spirit
ready for maturation,
tasted the finished product 9, 12 and 15 years down the track and walked away with a flask of our preferred dram self-filled from the barrel using the traditional valinch. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
We also claimed our square foot of land at Laphroaig and then slept on the grounds of the distillery as driving was no longer an option.
The next day we toured Ardbeg's facilities learning that not all whisky on Islay is made the same and subtle variations throughout the process result in key distinctions in the end products. The tour finished with a tasting, naturally.
It was on the final day that Islay really hit it out if the park though.
On the previous day we'd walked in to Lagavulin hoping to do a tasting when a Kiwi stopped me and said something along the lines of, "Shet bru, we've just done the Warehouse Tasting and we had like sex wheskies and it was bloody tops". Not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we rocked up the following morning and the Kiwi had come good for us.
Over about an hour and a half the head distiller, a man that's been at Lagavulin for over forty years, took us through six whiskies, all sucked straight from the barrel, that went from strength to strength to strength.
We finished on a 1966, the age of which I'm still trying to get my head around, but it was the 21 and 32 year olds that were truly something else, something beyond any whisky that I've tried before. They both slipped out of the glass and over your tongue like velvet and had a room of about 25, mostly men, scanning the room for a pillow to cover up their whisky induced shame. This was whisky porn at its absolute finest.
All in all, we hit up seven of the eight distilleries, imbibed innumerable drams and capped off an immense year in Europe in some serious style.
Now for a change of scenery...
