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bottling it

whisky, or, to give it its traditional gaelic name, uisge beatha has allegedly been produced in scotland for a smidgeon over 500 years. within the country, there are several specific regions allocated to each: highlands, speyside, lowlands, campbeltown, islay and, lastly, islands. of the above, campbeltown is perhaps the odd one out, comprising as it does, a mere three distilleries. however, its classification as a whisky producing region rests upon the fact that, in the past, there were as many as thirty.

islay, dare i say it, seems currently to be flavour of the month and to an extent, has been so for several years now. i moved to the island in 1987, at which time, things were looking less rosy. ardbeg, owned by laphroaig distillery, was closed, used mostly as storage by its owners. bruichladdich, owned at that point, by the proprietors of jura distillery, was also mothballed, as the terminology would dictate. production at bowmore distillery, owned by the morrison family was deliberately low on output, but it was the first of the isle's malts to offer guided tours of the distillery, having installed platforms and walkways to facilitate this entrepreneurial move. had you visited any of the others, you would most likely been met by signs advising that tours were pretty much off the menu, unless you happened to be best pals with the manager.

that situation has changed drastically in the intervening thirty-something years, with every one of the currently nine islay distilleries offering guided tours to the aficionados, intrigued or just plain interested. in fact, not only has the number of tours available increased exponentially, but each and every plant has built substantial visitor centres and employed a phalanx of tour guides. both ardbeg and ardnahoe have attractive and sizeable cafés/restaurants to feed the hungry throngs.

the islay whisky festival began life in 1999 and was a notably civilised affair, principally attracting the whisky cognoscenti. nowadays, much as i'd like to say such a state of affairs has been continued, i'd be guilty of stretching the truth. whisky is in danger of becoming more of a currency than a drink, with a myriad of limited edition bottlings (or expressions, as the terminology advises) being exchanged often for figures considerably higher than their purchase price. hard to believe that, at the debriefing meeting prior to the second islay whisky festival, one of the managers asked, on behalf of his employers, quite why they ought to be involved in the first place. suffice it to say, that question has never been asked for a second time.

a friend at one islay distillery once told me that they sold more whisky in the visitor centre than in the whole of japan. if ever you doubted the worldwide popularity of both whisky and islay, the evidence is plain to see. at a tourism event i attended earlier this week, a visitscotland representative informed me that their recent substantial investment in the local tourism information centre was encouraged by the number of international visitors drawn by the nine distilleries, not forgetting one more on the neighbouring isle of jura. frame this against the fact that, across the country, they simultaneously closed forty other centres. also bear in mind that islay is home to a population of only 3,200.

so where, might you ask, is the connection between single malt scotch whisky and cycling? it's a question that i am frequently asked and one that i frequently ask myself. i sort of get the match between coffee and cycling, but uisge beatha and cycling pretty much has me beat. several years past, i joined some cyclists associated with edinburgh-based scotch malt whisky society, to undertake a veritable tour de islay. i believe the jerseys designed expressly for the occasion are still available from thecyclejersey.com. this tour began at ardbeg distillery, routing through lagavulin, laphraoig, caol ila, bunnahabhain, kilchoman, bruichladdich and finally to its culmination at bowmore. i am now reliably informed that another tour de islay will take place again this year on the opening day of the 2019 islay whisky festival.

i can only presume, from this state of affairs, that the connection between cycling and whisky shows no real signs of diminishing, perhaps because selling the right bottle at the right time, could probably afford you some particularly high-quality, highly-specced carbon fibre.

and, having touched fleetingly on the subject of cycle jerseys, the number available from islay's distilleries has just been added to by the latest, particularly attractive offering from kilchoman, situated near islay's atlantic coast, overlooking loch gorm. the intrepid velocipedinal whisky aficionado can now choose from the original ardbeg jersey, two distinct options from bruichladdich, a stylish offering from bowmore and the gold, cream and purple team colours at ardnahoe.

though i doubt we'll ever see any cycling garmentage from caol ila, perhaps the above will bring peer pressure to bear upon lagavulin, laphraoig and bunnahabhain. i know that diageo's flagship islay distillery at lagavulin has had a prototype design in the works for well over a year, while laphroaig allegedly enquired of endura several years past, about producing a more attractive garment than the decidely grey item i have witnessed. bunnahabhain, sadly, is a largely unknown quantity, though i might attempt to break the ice with their marketing department in the near future.

meanwhile, the islay whisky-drinking cyclist, it seems, is quite spoilt for choice, despite my being no closer to determining quite why that is.

wednesday 17 april 2019