[Updated 2024] With Islay’s smoky, pungent, peaty whiskies gaining increasing popularity and traction around the globe, and with whisky tourism to Islay growing, now is a great time to come to terms with the island and its whiskies. Here’s a unique and new way of presenting Islay’s critical information….
The distilleries
There are currently ten operating distilleries. In order of (supposed) establishment, these are:
Bowmore (1779), Ardbeg (1815), Laphroaig (1815), Lagavulin (1816), Caol Ila (1846), Bruichladdich (1881), Bunnahabhain (1881), Kilchoman (2005), and Ardnahoe (2017). Did you count them? Yes, that’s only nine.
The tricky one to list, at least in the context of dates, is the Port Ellen distillery. It was originally founded as a malt mill in 1825 and was upgraded to a distillery in 1833, where it ran until 1929 before it first closed. It was then largely re-built in 1966/67, before again being closed – and this time, largely dismantled – in 1983. It was assumed the distillery was lost forever, and any bottles of its whisky pre-1983 became highly sought-after unicorns. Perhaps cashing in on the demand and boom in malt whisky (particularly peated malt whisky), owners Diageo announced plans to re-build Port Ellen in 2017, and the project finally came to fruition in March 2024.
Three more new distilleries are also in the works. Elixir Distillers is the team behind Portintruan; Ian MacLeod Distillers has its Laggan Bay project in the planning, and Chivas Brothers has picked up the baton on the long-anticipated Gartbreck distillery.
The distilleries vary in size and how much they produce. If we consider the distilleries in terms of their potential production capacity in litres of pure alcohol per annum, we can list them in the following order:
Caol Ila (6.5M), Bunnahabhain (3.5M), Laphroaig (3.3M), Lagavulin (3.0M), Ardbeg (2.4M), Bowmore (2.15M), Bruichladdich (2.0M), Ardnahoe (1.0M), and Kilchoman (0.65M). Clicking on each of the distillery names will take you to its official website.
To put those figures in context, consider the equivalent capacities for some of the mainland’s well-known distilleries: Glenlivet (21M), Glenfiddich (21M), and Glenmorangie (7.1M).
The whiskies
Not surprisingly, each distillery produces a very unique and different whisky. Despite the island’s reputation and primary style, there were – until the 2000’s – two distilleries that made only an unpeated whisky, namely Bruichladdich and Bunnahabhain. However, whilst both those two distilleries continue to make unpeated spiritas their main game, they now also make heavily peated whisky during various campaigns each year. Bruichladdich bottles its peated whisky under the names of Port Charlotte and Octomore. While the warehouses of the old Port Charlotte distillery remain just down the road from Bruichladdich, Port Charlotte is not a distillery!
There are many factors that contribute to how peaty/smoky a whisky is, and it’s not just how heavily they smoke the barley whilst malting. How they do their fermentation; the shape of their stills; and how they run their stills all have an impact on the final peatiness perceived in the whisky. (As a good example of this, Lagavulin and Caol Ila both use identical malt, but obviously produce two very different whiskies. That aspect of production and the difference between those two distilleries is discussed in detail about halfway down in this article here).
The peat levels in the malted barley are defined and described by measuring its phenol content in parts per million. For the general, every day spirit being produced as part of the distillery’s main product, the peating levels for each distillery are generally as follows:
* Ardbeg – 55ppm
* Ardnahoe – 40ppm
* Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Caol Ila – 35ppm
* Bowmore – 25ppm
* Kilchoman – 20-40ppm#
* Bunnahabhain# and Bruichladdich – 0-3ppm.
#(Kilchoman is a trickier distillery to pigeonhole, as it imports and uses “Ardbeg specification” malt at 55ppm from Port Ellen, but produces a portion of its own malt on site at a lower 20ppm, hence the above range is an average. Different bottlings and releases use different combinations of these two malt sources. Similarly, roughly 40% of Bunnahabhain’s production is now heavily peated at around 40ppm. Its peated whiskies are released with gaelic nomenclature.)
Of course, some distilleries have different or experimental campaigns where they produce spirit to different specifications. In some cases, these get bottled under different brands, or are given a specific name. For example:
* Octomore (super-peated Bruichladdich) – upwards of 160ppm, but each annual campaign differs slightly.
* Port Charlotte (heavily-peated Bruichladdich) – 40ppm
* Ardbeg Supernova – 100-120ppm
* Unpeated runs of Caol Ila are regularly bottled and can be found; lowly peated Ardbeg by the names of Blasda or Kildalton have also appeared.
Notwithstanding the above, do NOT make the mistake of assuming that a higher ppm level means the whisky will necessarily be peatier or smokier. We explore this aspect of whisky production in our other article, When fixation on peat and PPM gets OTT
It’s important to appreciate that the distilleries chiefly produce whisky to supply the blends, and – if their owners and blenders require it – the Islay distilleries have, at times, been called upon to produce unpeated or lowly-peated whisky. Both Ardbeg and Caol Ila have done this in the past, as mentioned above. Islay whisky is not as easy to pigeonhole as you might think!
The geography
Islay has villages and communities scattered all across the island, but the three main centres are Bowmore (considered the “capital” of Islay), Port Ellen, and Portnahaven.
Transport to the island is either by light aircraft from Glasgow (Islay has a tiny airport roughly halfway between Bowmore and Port Ellen), or by ferry. The ferry departs the mainland from Kennacraig, with sailings to two different Islay locations: Port Ellen in the south, and Port Askaig in the north-east. Sailing time is around two hours.
The distilleries are also scattered around the island. The distilleries that were founded in the 18th and 19th centuries are all located on the water in bays and inlets, so established because the transport of materials and product in and out of the distilleries was by water.
Visiting the distilleries
All the operating distilleries on Islay have visitor centres and conduct excellent tours. Tours can range from very basic “see-around” tours, to more in-depth and detailed tours that give more information and provide great tastings and warehouse experiences at the end.
Islay is also great in that it is home to three distilleries that still use traditional maltings floors – allowing you to see how the barley is traditionally steeped, laid out, turned, and kilned to become malt. There are just eight distilleries in all of Scotland that still do this, so to witness three of them on Islay – namely Bowmore, Laphroaig, and Kilchoman – is a great experience. Bruichladdich has recently announced plans to build their own onsite maltings also.
The Port Ellen Maltings
By the late 1960’s, some of the distilleries were battling inefficiencies and rising costs in importing barley to the island by themselves and producing their own malt. Scottish Malt Distillers, a subsidiary of the company we know today as Diageo, owned three distilleries (Port Ellen, Lagavulin, and Caol Ila), and decided to build a single maltings plant that could supply malt for its three distilleries. Built directly behind the Port Ellen distillery, the Port Ellen maltings commenced operations in 1973. A downturn in the industry in the 1980’s led to the closure of the Port Ellen distillery and the island’s remaining distilleries greatly reducing their production. With the maltings being uneconomical to run in these conditions, it was facing closure itself until the other distilleries on the island (and also Jura) signed an agreement in 1987 that they would take a proportion of their malt from the maltings. Today, the maltings supplies malt (both peated and unpeated) to seven of the island’s distilleries.
Conclusion
Of course, there’s a lot more to tell and learn about Islay, but if we added all the Islay information here, it would no longer be a short article! However, you’ll find plenty of extra information about Islay and its distilleries in other articles and archives here at Whisky & Wisdom. Here’s just a selection of Islay-related articles we’ve written in the past….
The complete guide to peat and peated whisky
Lagavulin or Laphroaig – which is better?
10 things every whisky lover should know before heading to Scotland
An evening with Laphroaig & John Campbell
When fixation on peat and PPM gets OTT
….plus we’ve published plenty of reviews and feature pieces on many of the recent releases from the Islay distilleries (particularly Ardbeg). Use the search bar feature on this page.
Cheers,
AD
PS…you’ll also find some useful Islay information here: https://www.islayinfo.com/
Terrific summary Andrew. With so much that is wonderful and unique about the Islay distilleries, such amazing history and friendly people, when planning visits you really do need to carefully manage your time! Time slows down there, you will need more time – getting your hire car, bumping around the island in the back of the Post Office van, having a “quick” lunch somewhere, extracting yourself from a tasting room full of Dutchmen, unexpected photographic opportunities, waiting for hairy coos to move; all these and more mean you will need LOTS more time than planned. That is a great part of the Islay experience. Slow down and enjoy it, stay the extra night or two!
Great reading! Any news about the the Gartbreck-project?
The Gartbreck project was shelved back in 2017 after disagreements with the land owner. They apparently came to some agreement later that year, but I’ve not heard anything since about it being revived, and Gartbreck’s official channels have been very quiet on the matter for over 12 months now, so I don’t think there’s much to tell.