The cons of the single track roads is that the driver is ever on the lookout for potholes, passing places – which seem an incomprehensible idea for some of the non-locals who blankly try to win a staring contest trying to force you to back up to a passing place, while they themselves are still in one with their rearaxis… Hardly any time to enjoy the beautiful vistas. One of the pros is that they get you to these same vistas and the most gorgeous places on the island with, or without distillery purpose. Ardnahoe and Bunnahabhain are two examples of the vistas with such vistas and a distillery.

The single track road to Bunnahabhain has a small gap halfway, accessing the new site of the Ardnahoe distillery, the most recent operational distillery on Islay, if you do not count the recently opened Port Ellen distillery, which they themselve state to have been established in 1825.

When we were on Islay last – at the end of 2017, we had a group of friends with us, whim we were showing around the island and her distilleries. This site was nothing more than a slab of concrete and the beginnings of a skeleton of metal beams, with a shed where we were shown the distillery through a set of VR goggles. About a year after our visit, at the end of 2018, Ardnahoe’s first spirit trickled from their stills and cask number 1 was laid to rest in their warehouse. 

Barley is brought in from the mainland peated to their liking and is fed through a century old Boby mill. A rare sight, this mill, as not even ten are used in the industry nowadays, three of which are on Islay, all of them about that same century of age. Per 2.5 tonne batch, the milled malt, now called grist, is mixed in the copper topped mash tun, with fresh heated water from loch Arnahoe. Hours later this sugary water, now wort, is drained into one of four wooden washbacks. Here, the wort is mixed with yeast and left to ferment for around 70 hours, turning into wash, which is fed into the wash still. Both the was still and spirit still have long lyne arms, competing in length only with the ones we found at Glen Garioch distillery. 

Unique for the Island is that the distillates from both stills are cooled to liquids by 77 m long copper piping running through two worm tubs proudly displayed at the entrance of the distillery. Stainless steel inners, with wooden cladding obviously, because the liquids would not touch the tubs anyway.

With only 640.000 litres of alcohol per year, Ardnahoe distillery is the second smallest distillery on Islay, having just surpassed Kilchoman, even after their expansion. About 80% of the distillate is matured into bourbon casks, 10% in sherry casks and the remainder of the wood is experimental and can thus be anything they can get their hands on. As with Caol Ila, the cafe at the distillery did not serve lunch, but did have coffee, tea and scones. Perfect with raspberry jam and clotted cream. We will not return home hungry…

Having seen enough for now, we continued the single track road to Bunnahabhain. We could have joined a warehouse tour which was just about to start, but sensibility got the better of us and, because we are driving ourselves around the island, we skipped the tasting this time. This gave us ample time to go outside, with the views good enough to see the Island of Mull and, with the wind having dropped to acceptable levels, we were granted permission to take our little drone Donatella* for a spin from the pier, as long as we steered clear of the distillery buildings. Said and done, the results can soon be found on Youtube and we’ll link them here as well.

*Yes, we name inanimate objects, have you met us?