Day 14: Islay (and Jura)

That’s better, back to my usual readership of maybe 3 people, nothing like a good bit of drinking to thin the hits. Today’s entry might even get me down to 1.

We kicked off with a trip on the ferry to Jura, well first with M, P & G trying to kill me by suggesting we walk the 20 or so minutes to Port Askaig. Now there are 20 minute walks, I do these all the time with the dog back home, but 20 minutes in Islay involves no more than 50 metres of straight track, and if it’s straight it’s also likely to be a 10 degree incline or decline. I’m an urban walker, I don’t get the same joy as others in all the uninterrupted nature, especially when it means keeping an eye on where I’m putting my feet due to loose stones and or livestock poo. Give me a fairly flat city with lots of shops and places for snacks and I’ll walk all day.

So I dragged my city arse the distance to the Port Askaig ferry terminal, where we waited for the boat to Jura. There’s no booking tickets on this ferry, it’s basically a floating box with ramps at either end and a motor: people and cars board at one end, as many cars as it’ll fit, with people standing around the edges. It pootles the 10 minutes across the channel between Islay and Jura, just long enough for a staff member to get around to everyone to sell tickets, drops the ramp, and everyone gets off before it repeats and heads back to Port Askaig. It does this every half hour to hour most days of the week.

At Jura there was a Feis Ile shuttle bus to take us half way around the island to Craighouse, location of the Jura distillery and basically the largest population centre on the island: on Jura deer outnumber humans close to 10 to 1. The island is otherwise known as the location George Orwell wrote 1984, and riding in the shuttle bus I did wonder about how close he came to the mark, if only Orwell had seen what basic capitalistic greed and misguided religion would do to set itself up as more controlling and oppressive than communism turned out to be. Arguable Jura’s other claim to fame was being the location where the KLF burned one million pounds, for reasons that made sense to them at the time.

We didn’t have a million pounds, but we had booked an extended distillery tour. This kicked off with a bit of island history, before taking us through the regular stages of distilling. I may have said it before, but basically unless you’re a serious whisky anorak/trainspotter, it’s not necessary to do the full tour of every distillery, as things are pretty much the same. Get grain that’s either pre-malted or malt it on site. Grind said grain. Mash grain with hot water to extract/convert fermentable sugars. Take the liquid (wort) and add yeast, ferment until a high alcohol unhopped beer (wash) is achieved. Send the wash to the stills, which are copper and vary from distillery to distillery. Heat to distil the alcohol, do this two or three times. Put the resulting clear distilled new make spirit into barrels. Wait.

Then came the tasting, tapped straight from handy barrels in the room. We kicked off with a 2014 second fill bourbon barrel, Jura’s generally light and floral spirit having picked up some wonderful vanilla flavours and fruity esters (fruit salad according to G). Then came this year’s Feis Ile bottling, a 14 year old first fill bourbon barrel with richer spice and fruit. Third whisky was a total cracker, a 33 year old put into a a sherry hogshead, possibly second fill, as the sherry notes, while present, certainly didn’t totally dominate the way I’ve had other malts of a similar age. We finished with a gently peated 2005 dram, with some wonderful green notes of stone fruit.

The tour went a little over time, so we had a quick bite to eat at the pub across the road, for me a full flavoured venison burger (doing my bit for the island, after all they do have a little bit of a deer problem), before it was time to grab the bus back to the ferry. Jura’s was possibly the least slickly organised Feis day event we’ve been to, but the overall friendliness of the staff was great. Jura has also had, by a very long shot, the best portaloos of any distillery to date, not only clean but also wonderfully outfitted.

Remind me to seek out the rum cask Jura when I get back home.

We had an afternoon tasting booked for Bunnahabhain, so once the ferry dropped us back at Port Askaig we made the possibly less than optimal decision to walk to where the next shuttle buss would take us to the distillery. Less than optimal as this was going back up the 14 degree incline, in full sun, and no breeze. I certainly felt s bit the worse for wear once we got to the pick up point, at least I had some water to sip on once we were on our way. The road to Bunnahabhain is a narrow windy one, so for Feis they have closed it to general traffic and instead shuttle folks to the distillery. We had a challenging few moments at the distillery, as the lack of phone coverage/wifi meant I couldn’t access the pre-booked tickets, so I thought we’d booked for the signposted “Alternative Warehouse 9 tasting”. We hadn’t, instead managed to work out thanks to some incredibly friendly event staff that we’d booked for the “Warehouse 9 tasting” (not on the event signage as it sold out a couple of months ago). Totally clear, except when I’m dehydrated and somewhat overwhelmed by a bunch of cigar smokers generating a cancer cloud in my direction. But we got there.

The warehouse 9 tasting took in some pretty special Bunnahabhain, and some rather generous pouring from whisky drawn from casks set out in front of us. Kicked off with a 2006 manzanilla sherry cask, light and dry and with a hint of sulfur. There’s a lot of industry talk about sulfur and sherry casks, and some whiskies can suffer from it, but I’ve had sulfured Bunna before and I think the spirit can cope with this, possibly even has some extra good accents because of it. Next up was a 2009 mystery red wine cask, in that the actual provenance of the cask is undisclosed. Some felt it may have been Bordeaux, but I’m leaning towards a lighter Italian red due to the total lack of tannins that I find generally unpalatable with whisky: a decent wine cask whisky is a rare thing, but this fully matured, almost sweet (hints of raspberry lollies) was delicious. Third dram was a 2009, first in sherry, then with additional years in an amarone cask. Also very gorgeous.

The final dram also provided some entertainment, as it was peated. Katie, our tasting guide, asked the group if anyone didn’t really like peated whisky. A brave gent at the front put his hand up, and confessed that while he liked peated whisky, he “didn’t like Bunnahabhain peated whisky”. It was a good natured jovial crowd, where all opinions were welcome, so Katie told him the next dram may change his mind. Oh, and an aside, “What’s your name?”

“Peter,” came the reply.

I couldn’t breathe for at least a minute.

The whisky itself was a lush, full bodied 2004 sherry refill, then with 10 years in an oloroso barrel, with a decent hint of smoke, some maritime savoury flavours, a hint of oil, followed by an excellent dark fruit finish.

We then had about 20 minutes to claim our 2 free drams (the 12 year old and the Stiuireadair), hit the gift shop, before it was time to head back up the hill to the shuttle bus. Sorry Bunnahabhain, your portaloos are not a match for Jura’s. There was a bit of a wait for the shuttle bus due to the number of people all leaving, so there was some good conversation with other queuefellows, this time some good natured Scots who caught Bruce Springsteen’s recent Edinburgh show, and it apparently totally rocked, which bodes well for Landgraaf.

It was fortunately only a short walk from the drop off to our bnb, where P prepared a solid sweet potato curry, before a cheese course of a blue cheese, and a gin and tonic flavoured cheese, the latter good but unusual in being both sweet but with a tang.

Tomorrow we’re heading to the west side, with drive by visits to Kilchoman and Bruichladdich, possibly a stroll in between (hopefully not like today’s full sun hike), and hopefully a quick photo stop at Caol Ila, just to complete the set of all currently producing Islay distilleries (we went passed Adnahoe today, but I’ll add them to the list once they have a commercially available whisky).