Scotland Road Trip 2018 - Day Four (Machir Bay, Kilchoman, Bruichladdich)
Our second full day in gorgeous Islay coincided with Bruichladdich's Open Day, so we set out to the western arm of the island that those Progressive Hebridean Distillers call home. Unlike the rockier southern shores, Islay's western reaches have some gorgeous white-sand beaches, and it was there we began.
Machir Bay
As always, driving in Islay was an adventure of mostly one-lane, two-way roads, but we reached the small parking area on the ridge above Machir Bay without incident.
The beach and the bay itself were stunning, with dark cerulean waters roiling and crashing in whitecaps along the shore. The wind was strong the day we visited, stirring up ripples in the sand, destined to clash with the waves rolling in from the west.
Kilchoman Distillery
Kilchoman was the first new distillery to open up in Islay in a long time, back in the early days of the whisky renaissance of the 2000s (2005, to be precise). It's not the most picturesque distillery, although it is surrounded by golden fields of barley, some of which have signs proclaiming that they are future bottles of 100% Islay.
The casks sitting outside Kilchoman, including a barrel filled in 2009
We didn't have time to take a full tour, but we visited the gift shop, which is one of the largest and most decked-out in Islay, reflecting the fact that the distillery was built with whisky tourism in mind (others, like Lagavulin, have much smaller, more makeshift spaces). The distillery also has a gorgeous display cask filled with different expressions of their whisky.
We picked up a souvenir glencairn glass with the distinctive Kilchoman logo there, along with a healthy number of samples to fill it up! Although we didn't enjoy these drams until the end of the day, I'll skip ahead and collect my Kilchoman notes here.
Kilchoman Sanaig (46% ABV) - Sanaig and Loch Gorm are two of Kilchoman's expressions that feature significant sherry influence, and the differences between the two were undoubtedly subtle. This dram features a classic, dry Islay nose of brine and smoked seafood. The palate has mild, malty, caramel sweetness complemented by rich hookah smoke. The finish is a bit hot and spicy at first, and lingers for a while with smoke and vegetal flavors. Loch Gorm gives a similar experience but at a higher price point, so I'd recommend Sanaig first. Kilchomans seem to err on the dry side on the nose in particular, no matter how much sherry or fortified wine finishing they absorb. A-
Kilchoman Loch Gorm (46%) - Having this one and Sanaig back to back, it was sometimes hard to tell the two apart. Both are oloroso sherry-aged whiskies, although Loch Gorm is the one that's 100% sherry cask-matured. This whisky has a dry, chalky, medicine tablet scent that belies a sweet, malty, and sherry-influenced palate. Loch Gorm is one of the less smoky Kilchomans, and perhaps a hair or two less smoky than Sanaig, although there are wisps of it curling up in the mid-palate through the finish, which is also slightly grassy and fruity. There's not quite enough smoky assertiveness here to hit squarely in my wheelhouse, but it's an enjoyable drink nonetheless. This one's closer to $100 in the US, whereas Sanaig is a more reasonable $75-80. B+
Kilchoman 2009 Vintage (46%) - I would rate this as one of my less favored Kilchomans, although I love their lineup as a whole, so that's not the end of the world. While Machir Bay is the best value in the line and a very similar scotch to Ardbeg 10, and Sanaig and Loch Gorm deliver sherry influence, Vintage 2009 is defined less by its finish and more by the clear vintage age statement, which marks it as significantly older than the other mainstays in Kilchoman's lineup. The age may help a little, but what it brings is more than a passing resemblance to Caol Ila 12. The nose is vegetal and peaty, with a vanilla note that's not present in other Kilchomans. The palate features a nice lemon citrus flavor that's familiar to any drinker of Machir Bay, more vanilla, and a light plum, along with the customary Kilchoman smoke. The smoke is most prominent on the finish. This boils down to a slightly more expensive bottle of Caol Ila 12. B-
Kilchoman Port Cask Matured (50%) - I was excited to try this dram out. In fact, it was the one I was most excited to taste out of all the samples that we purchased. I tried last year's version in the fall and found it quite pleasurable. I'm not sure why this one has been diluted further down to 50% ABV. Unfortunately, this year's edition of Port Cask Matured proved to be something of a letdown. The port finish doesn't add what I would have expected to Kilchoman's base spirit. The nose remains dry and earthy, with little sweetness: mushrooms, rice, odd savory notes abound. The palate is sweet, but the port leans toward adding medicinal sweet flavors, akin to Laphroaig. Again, unexpected. The finish features a burgeoning sweetness that combines with cinnamon spice and barley. The port tamped down the smoke in this release but really added some wild card flavors rather than the dark, rich fruits I anticipated. It's a strange dram, not unpleasant, but too surprising in odd ways to love while drinking. In comparison, the distillery exclusive PX cask showcased the crackling synergy possible with sweet and peat flavors. B-
Kilchoman PX Cask Distillery Exclusive (59.2%) - Now we're talking! This is the cask-strength, single-cask bottle available only at the distillery. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, even a few days before Feis Ile, the shop had been cleaned out of bottles, and I was only able to get a sample. Kilchoman really kills it with the sherry finishes. Wafting out of the glass is a rich, pungent oil, sharp peat smoke, and an incongruous yet beguiling vanilla. The palate is surprisingly creamy rather than oily, perhaps due to the lack of dilution. This is a thick, chewy dram full of fruitcake and raisins, just as you'd expect from a PX-influenced whisky. The finish has warm, toasted bread notes, more smoke, sweet coffee, and cherry. A-
Kilchoman Sauternes Cask Matured (59.3%) - Sauternes is a famous and famously expensive dessert wine from France, and it's a surprise that more distilleries don't experiment with finishing or full maturation in Sauternes barrels. Perhaps it is too expensive to acquire the barrels? If so, then I salute Kilchoman for going the extra mile (or extra pound). This is one of the few Kilchomans that has a sweet nose, something lacking even in the heavily sherried distillery exclusive, and those sweet, sappy notes carry through all three phases: honey, brine, Carolina barbecue sauce, and peppery and dry accents on the finish to cut the sweetness of that honey just a bit. Another great whisky from Kilchoman. A-
Bruichladdich Open Day
The main event for Sunday was Bruichladdich's Open Day, which was a madhouse. When we got within a mile of the distillery, we already saw cars pulling over to park on the side of the road. Bruichladdich has been on a tear recently in terms of popularity, and even among the residents of Islay, it seemed to be one of the most frequent answers when we asked them for their favorite distillery. "Progressive Hebridean Distillery," indeed!
Bruichladdich, like Kilchoman, is a relatively non-photogenic distillery. It is not right on the shore like Lagavulin or Laphroaig but rather set 200 feet or so inland from the rocky Loch Indaal, on the western arm of Islay. There was a beautiful old sailing vessel of some sort out on the water when we arrived.
The distillery's distinctive welcoming sign is made out of barrels. Ordinarily, they spell out Bruichladdich, but today they flipped the barrels and put the "Port Charlotte" side facing outward. Port Charlotte is one of Bruichladdich's several lines of whiskies, and is the umbrella name for their peated products (with unpeated whiskies under the Bruichladdich name, and insanely heavily peated ones under the Octomore line).
The Open Day festivities were absolutely packed with people, and Bruichladdich seemed to want to create a more boisterous take on the usual festival days. A band played on a large stage that even had an elevated dancing area, where Scottish visitors did a jig or two while lively music carried over a crowd that was packed in like sardines. There were twice as many people and also twice as many food vendors as there were at Lagavulin. On top of that, there were multiple stations with unique themes, including a Botanist cocktail tent where one could literally pluck garnishes such as rosemary or thyme from live plants and throw them into your gin and tonic. The downside of the day was that entry was not free, unlike at the other distilleries (5£ a person, albeit with a free dram), and there were fewer free things offered there. The cocktail tent, for instance, was a cash bar, which was a marked difference from the generosity of Lagavulin's festival celebration just one day earlier.
I ended up spending most of my time at the Open Day in a long, serpentine line waiting for Bruichladdich's special festival bottle, Port Charlotte Heretic. Heretic combines the last five barrels of Port Charlotte spirit from when the distillery reopened in 2001, so it was a rare and much coveted release among this year's Feis Ile offerings. However, the hour or so that I stood in line ended up sapping much of my energies, so we called it a day after getting our souvenir bottle and glencairn glass.
The Town of Bowmore
After escaping from the crush of people at Bruichladdich, we decided to zig where others were zagging and spend the afternoon in the town of Bowmore. Unfortunately, Sunday was not exactly the town's most active day. The Bowmore distillery itself was shut down other than a small gift shop and the tasting bar wasn't pouring drams, so the picture below more or less encapsulates the entirety of our experience at Bowmore during this trip.
We did find one open restaurant: a local pizza joint, charmingly named Peatzeria, which looked out over the sea. We even skipped some stones after a tasty meal of salad and margherita pizza.
We also dropped in on a well-regarded hotel bar in town, the Lochside Inn. On the whole, the prices there were about as high as you'd find in Islay, so I recommend searching for drinks elsewhere, but the Inn did have a mammoth selection of rare and expensive Islay whiskies, including four or five Port Ellen releases.
They did have a bit of life wisdom, although this is an aphorism that I suspect many of the island's visitors already appreciate.
We wrapped up the day in quiet fashion by buying some microwave dinners from the local Scottish grocery chain, Co-op, and heading back to our B&B for the night (and for the Kilchoman tasting I summarized above). We became pretty obsessed with this grocery chain while in Scotland, actually. We first encountered it in Loch Lomond park, where we picked up a quick and cheap lunch for the road but also found a bottle of Gordon & Macphail Caol Ila 2004. We came to realize that this chain is everywhere in Scotland, and uniformly has amazing (and amazingly cheap) food. Their Indian food was so great that we ended up eating in for most of our dinners on the island, for only 5£ for two entrees! Look, we had to make up for all those 100£+ bottles of liquor that we were buying!