The Road to Islay
So, what I didn’t mention in the last Scotland installment was a little glitch in our transportation plans which occurred during our last day in Edinburgh. We thought that we were all booked on the same flight from Glasgow to Islay the next day. But when we (Ritch and Colleen) did not receive the check-in email for the flight that our friends did, we looked into it further and discovered that our reservation had been cancelled, apparently because there had been a price change between the time we booked it and the time the charge went through. The booking company did however offer to get us on the next available flight to Islay on the 22nd.
This seemed like a disaster but, after a brief WTF moment and visions of our friends celebrating Ritchard’s birthday without us, we worked our way through the problem. We were able to make arrangements to rent a car from the Glasgow Airport (sharing a ride there from Edinburgh with Greg and Kim) and then drove to a place called Kennacraig, where we could catch a ferry to Port Askaig on Islay from which we would have about a 30 minute taxi ride to Port Ellen.
It appeared that there was a later ferry which went directly to Port Ellen, but we really wanted to catch the earlier one to Port Askaig so that we could be there in time for dinner with our friends. Just to make things even more interesting, the ferry company’s online booking system was down for upgrades until May 16th, so we had to go on a bit of faith here.
Although Glasgow and Kennacraig are only about 50 miles apart as the crow flies, the road there travels about 50 miles northwest from Glasgow to the east side of the wide River Fyne valley, then does a 180 degree turn and continues for about 50 miles southwest on the west side of the Fyne valley, taking about 2-1/2 hours to drive.
As an added bonus, our rental car was not only right-hand drive but also had a manual transmission. So, drive on the wrong side of the road (done that) on the wrong side of the car (done that) with the wrong hand on the gearshift (first time for everything, right?). It was all a little weird at first, but Ritchard got used to it pretty quickly and actually ended up enjoying it as it was the first time he had driven a car in about six months. We did have one bit of good luck in that Greg had brought Ritchard’s renewed driver’s license with him as the old one was set to expire on May 15th.
The drive, which took us through Inverary, was actually quite beautiful as was the ferry ride which even turned out to be kind of luxurious with two bars and a restaurant on board. Thanks to a little help from Greg, we were able to have a taxi waiting for us at the Port Askaig ferry terminal and ended up arriving in Port Ellen only about an hour behind our friends and in plenty of time for dinner that night.
The funny thing about all this is that we had actually wanted to take the ferry rather than fly but thought it would just be too challenging logistically for the group. When we tallied it up the cost of the rental car (which sat at the ferry terminal in Kennacraig for 3 days) and the ferry and found that it was just about the same as flying. It was actually kind of a great travel moment for us that left us feeling like the savvy accomplished travelers we would like to think we are, able to overcome any obstacle.
Islay and Port Ellen
Islay (pronounced “eye-lah”) is the fifth largest Scottish island (eighth largest British isle) but only has a population of about 3,500. It is located about 30 miles off Scotland’s west coast but, as noted above, it is not all that easy to get here. Port Ellen is the largest town on the island with a population of about 800 and is built around Leodamais Bay, Islay’s primary deep water harbor.
Islay is a very beautiful place with quaint towns, green hills, sandy beaches, and rocky shores, but it is also a bit windswept and the weather can be harsh at times. We all stayed in a small, quirky and rambling, but very nice hotel in Port Ellen called the Islay Inn in rooms clustered together in one wing with a lounge in between which felt a bit like being back in college dorm rooms. All of us very much enjoyed strolling around Port Ellen, the harbor, and the adjoining beaches and even the surrounding countryside during our visit.
While we discovered that some people do actually come here to hike, kayak, and enjoy the outdoors, what brings most people to Islay is the whiskey and, for the most part, life on Islay revolves around its distilleries and whiskies as well as the tourism they generate.
As I alluded to earlier, we had chosen Islay to celebrate Ritchard’s 64th birthday. We chose Islay because it is the only place on earth where Islay whiskeys (those really smoky peaty ones that are Ritchard’s favorites) are distilled. We had chosen Port Ellen because it is strategically located within walking distance (or at least sober walking distance, but I get ahead of myself) of three of Ritchard’s favorite distilleries: Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg.
Whiskey Tasting
For Ritchard’s birthday on the 15th, Greg had made arrangements for whiskey tastings at the Lagavulin and Laphroaig distilleries. We weren’t able to schedule one at Ardbeg when we booked the others and weren’t entirely certain how many tastings one can make it though in one day, so we figured that we would go there afterwards for lunch and perhaps a wee nip if we survived the first two tastings.
This was the first time either Colleen or I had done a whiskey tasting and we really weren’t sure what to expect. We have, over the years, participated in a good many beer brewery tours. (In New Jersey, you used to be required to go on such a tour before you were allowed to drink any beer at the brewery!) Typically, they explain how it is made, show you the works, give you a free sample or two, and then send you on your way.
This was a very different experience. There is an incredible amount of history, tradition, and pride behind the making of Islay’s whiskies and, for some of us, coming here was almost a sacred pilgrimage, kind of like searching for the holy grail. Those of us who came here with that spirit were not disappointed and I think even those who came with a little less enthusiasm for the whisky had a pretty good time.
We started our whisky trail at the Lagavulin distillery where they have been making world renowned single malt scotch whiskies for about 200 years and which is, arguably, the best of the best when it comes to single malt scotch. Anecdotally, Lagavulin was made famous beyond whiskey aficionados by an episode of the TV show Parks and Rec when one of its main characters, Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), found his way here at the end of his own spiritual quest.
We arrived at Lagavulin early and, after a preview of the gift shop, we gathered with other tasting participants. We waited in a nice lounge with wood paneled floors, walls, and ceilings, lots of tweed, books about whisky, and a large Christmas tree made from Lagavulin bottles.
At the appointed time, we were led from the lounge to THE DISTILLERY TASTING ROOM, which I now speak of with some degree of reverence. The Lagavulin tasting room is a cellar of sorts, below their oldest warehouse with ancient dark wood all around and the smell of salt, peat, and whiskey (what they refer to as “The Angel’s Share”) in the air. Each participant receives a small tasting glass but, as some of us eventually discovered, you can also have your pour in a small bottle to take home and savor later.
The tasting was conducted by none other than Iain McArthur, the Lagavulin legend who greeted Ron Swanson at the end of his pilgrimage in the Parks and Rec episode noted above. Iain has worked at the Lagavulin distillery for over 40 years and is a bit of a legend among whiskey aficionados. It is tempting to call him a rock star (the Mick Jagger of whisky?), but he is way too genuine and unassuming for such comparisons. As we sampled a variety of whiskies drawn directly from casks, Iain entertained us with his Islay charm and witty stories, quizzed and tested our whiskey knowledge, and shared a bit of his own.
The thing which I probably found most interesting is that taste is actually more important than age in whisky and that some whiskies actually don’t improve with more age. To this point, one of the better whiskies we sampled was one which purposely has no set or disclosed age but, rather, is bottled when the distiller decides that it is “right”. That said, the last whisky we tasted was a 25-year old which retails for about 2,500 USD a bottle and which, yes, was pretty extraordinary.
The highlight of the tasting for us was when Iain had Ritchard provide the syphon to draw some 18-year old from a cask while the tasting group (who had been tipped off by Greg) sang “Happy Birthday” and Iain “christened” Ritchard with some fine whiskey as he bent over the cask. While there was still quite a bit of birthday celebration yet to come, this was a really great moment which I’m sure none of us will ever forget. (If you haven’t already done so, you can see Ritchard’s whiskey christening on Colleen’s Instagram – see “csherman1961” – you’ll have to scroll back a bit to find it, but worth the view!) For good measure, Iain took off Greg’s cap and gave him a wee whiskey baptism of his own!
After finishing our tasting we strolled the banks beside the distillery (for logistical purposes, all of Islay’s distilleries are located on the water) where Iain reappeared with a bottle of the 25-year old to top us off before we departed for our next stop.
From Lagavulin, we strolled up the Distillery Path, which was added a few years ago after too many near misses between whiskey drinkers and cars on the distilleries roadway, to the Laphroaig distillery. These days it’s a bit of a toss-up which of the Islay scotches Ritchard likes best, but for many years Laphroaig was his go-to as it is a little more affordably priced than some of the others.
Our group for this tasting was a bit smaller but included a couple of the folks who had been with us at Lagavulin. At Laphroaig, the tasting glasses come with a lanyard attached which allows you to hang them around you neck – very helpful as the tasting day goes on!
The tasting Greg scheduled for us at Laphroaig was what they call the “Uisage Tour”. It is conducted in Laphroaig’s iconic Warehouse No. 1 in an antechamber to the gates of whisky heaven. Here, we sampled whiskies from three different types of casks and were then allowed to choose our favorite which was then decanted into a 200 ml take-away bottle and properly registered and labeled for future consumption.
Our guide for this tasting was a very nice young woman named Alice whom Colleen concluded must have been a former kindergarten teacher as she seemed quite apt at managing the limited attention spans of whisky tasters. We learned that the type of cask used to age a whiskey has much to do with its eventual flavor and color and sampled whiskies from three types of casks: one of American oak, one a sherry cask, and one a cask of new French oak.
Although this may be changing soon, American oak casks may only be used once by the rules for making American bourbon, so there is quite a secondary market for them in Scotland where a single cask may be used for a hundred years or more. Sherry casks, which come from Spain, are favored by many, but they can cost ten to twenty times as much as an American oak cask. French oak was a new thing for me at least and we approached it with some degree of skepticism as tends to be the case with most things French. We learned that all whiskey casks are charred on the inside, not to impart smokiness, but to open up the grain of the wood making it easier for the whiskey to extract flavors, which vary depending upon the type of wood used.
We savored each tasting as Alice quizzed us on the taste and character of each and then explained how its flavor and color were related to its casking and did her best to keep us focused on the task at hand. When the time came to pick our favorite, most of us, surprisingly, choose the new French oak cask which had a great taste and, again surprisingly, a much darker color than the other two.
We had a driver waiting to whisk us off to the Ardbeg distillery for lunch which, as well as I can remember (which is not all that well), was very good and, from what I can tell from the photos, involved beer as well as more whiskey. While Denny and Wendy stuck with our original plan and made the 3-mile walk back to our hotel, Greg was kind enough to call a cab and we rode back as walking seemed unlikely to end well for Ritchard.
After a bit of down time, we reconvened in the hotel’s restaurant for a birthday dinner. We were served by a lovely young woman named Eva who had waited on us previously at the hotel restaurant as well as at lunch at the Ardbeg distillery (I said it was a small town). We all got to know her a bit during our stay and learned that it was her last night at the hotel as she was preparing to go away to University, but planned to come back to Islay afterwards. We were all very excited for her and wished her the best.
At the end of our dinner, Eva brought out a birthday cake for Ritchard which Denny had apparently convinced the chef to bake as there was not one to be had on the island. After dinner, we retired to the hotel bar to sample a few more Islay whiskeys (there are quite a few of them) to put a wrap on what couldn’t have been a better birthday for Ritchard.
On Wednesday May 16th, our last full day on Islay, Greg, Denny, and Ritchard played a round of golf at The Machrie, a golf course which is ranked the 75th in the world and the 6th among golf courses in Europe. The course is nestled in the dunes of a pristine 7-mile beach and might be the most beautiful course any of us have ever played.
Colleen, Kim, and Wendy made their own way there and cheered us in onto the 18th green from the clubhouse terrace. We had a nice lunch in the clubhouse restaurant, although we were all a bit disappointed that Denny was unable to convince them to move the lobster thermador from the dinner menu to the lunch menu.
We then took a lovely 4-mile walk back to Port Ellen. Probably one of Islay’s few shortcomings is that its public transport is a bit spotty and thin, consisting of one public bus route which doesn’t pass the golf course and about 10 private taxi drivers who generally need to be booked well in advance. It was, in fact, a very nice walk but it was a bit long, made a bit longer by some of us wanting to stop to look at how cute every lamb we passed was, but also because of the need to step off the roadway whenever a car passed.
We had planned on having dinner at the only restaurant in town other than our hotel – a pizza and sandwich shop called the Sea Salt – but, having failed to make advance reservations, we were unable to do so and had to settle for carry-out pizzas and salads. We had thought to eat these in a courtyard just off the hotel’s bar, but that plan was nixed by the hotel so instead we relived some college dorm experiences eating in the lounge between our rooms. Afterwards we retired to the hotel’s bar to see if there were any whiskeys which we had yet to sample which (of course) there were.
Colleen and Ritchard set off the next morning (Thursday, May 17th) on an early ferry from Port Ellen to do the reverse of the trip from Glasgow. Although we were sad to be leaving Islay, the ferry ride back to Kennacraig provided us with some spectacular views of Port Ellen and we vowed to return again some day soon.
Denny, Wendy, Greg, and Kim got to spend a bit more time on Islay before catching a flight back to Glasgow where we all planned to meet for one last dinner together.
Burning the Inheritance 
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