Everything, everywhere All at Once

Okay. Slow down a bit. We were now only a couple of days on the Island and had to force ourselves not to do everything, everywhere all at once*, and deliberately tried to stay on the North end of Islay, with the smallest of the Bowmore Cottages as our place of rest and the most…

Islay adventures: dodging potholes & distillery discoveries!

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…

The Sound of Islay

Oh, hello! Is it another day already? We thought we were on Islay time? Normally, we would have said it slows down a bit, but it seems to have caught up with mainland time over the years. Shame! Anyway, While we want to explore the Island and not only go on another distillery hopping spree,…

Katie’s first time

Having decided to calm things down, which sort of comes natural when one is on Islay, we leisurely cruised to the Bruichladdich shop, which we had never seen this busy outside of Feis Ile. Crammed with people going on different tours, and sadly no space for us to squeeze in. Although we have seen the…

A 5 year itch.

A 5 year itch. January 19 2019 was our last article about a whisky distillery we visited in May 2018. A year and a bit later, in October 2020, we wrote some words about the annually released Malt Whisky Yearbook from our friend Ingvar Ronde. After that, a long silent period from us. Sorry if…

DARNLEY’S

In 2016, we visited the Kingsbarns distillery in the Kingdom of Fife for the first time. Then, they were already producing and casking single malt spirit for a whole year, which means that it has now come of age and can be called whisky. Except for an exclusive selection of their founders’ club members, it…

A WHISKY PILGRIMAGE

Driving through the beautiful Kingdom Fife, we find ourselves nearing the town of Newburgh towards a location that should be a pilgrimage for whisky lovers. Where in the old days Grey Monks grew a diversity of fruits from their own orchards, kept bees for their honey and mead and harvested barley to brew and distill…

THE BORDERS DISTILLERY

The Scottish Borders. An area in Scotland we have mostly passed through, when driving on the coastal A1, trying to reach a more northern destination when coming off the boat at Newcastle upon Tyne. Little did we know that the A696 – the “other” road leading north from Newcastle, would merge with the A68 at…

LEG ONE OF THREE

Because three weeks of touring through Scotland is quite a bit to digest in one read, we decided to gather our notes and split the trip in three more edible parts. Mind you, this first part is just a resume of what we have been doing and all distillery visits will be getting their own…

De Bronckhorst

The eastern parts of the Dutch province Gelderland is known as the “Achterhoek” which translates easiest as a back-corner or, as we learned from our Scottish friends in Fife, a Neuk – which means something entirely different translated back to Dutch. The Achterhoek is a rural place with patches of forests, but mostly flat open…

#EpicIslayTrip

October 2014. A group of our friends – most of which had never been to Scotland or even a distillery, had agreed to be shown a handful of distilleries and follow our lead to our beloved Scotland. Success of our trip was great, we popped some Scotland-cherries and it did not take long before the…

Dungeons & Eagles

In our search for the next passionate Dutch distiller, we travel to the picturesque municipality of Doesburg, where medieval monastery “Het Arsenaal” has been converted to house several small businesses. Where a Grand Café, small cinema, game store, wine merchant and whisky specialist already had found their home, a micro distillery has joined inside their…