WHISKY MEETS CAMPING
Three-day distillery tour on island of Islay shows few things bond strangers like scotch and wilderness
ISLAY, SCOTLAND— To eat, or not to eat, and instead tour a whisky distillery? It’s a dilemma trickier than Shakespeare posed Hamlet.
That is the question facing a Czech backpacker who arrives at Ardbeg visitor centre one regular Wednesday afternoon to no fanfare, at least initially.
Gripped by malt madness, he budgeted just £10 — that’s $16 — a day on a cross-continental pilgrimage to Islay’s eight distilleries.
The tour is £5 ($8). Can the traveller, who signs a postcard to Ardbeg staff only as Marek, survive on crumbs?
He further risked shuffling off his mortal coil by bringing only a sleeping bag — no tent.
Camping here for three days, I learn Islay’s harsh beauty is untameable, even with the right equipment. Ruggedly handsome, the island is more Gerard Butler than Matt Damon.
Hiking the green and auburn hills is like walking on a plane during turbulence. Soft spots of grassy roots called “baby heads” send ankles on a mechanical bull ride.
My “courageous outdoorsman” act wanes after an impromptu long jump into a murky bog, and an aimless fondle with a tent for 20 minutes. I stare at what I’m later told is a blow-up orange mattress, suspect it’s a dinghy, ponder why they gave me it, watch a spider crawl into the bag, discard it, and resist the temptation to burn it with fire.
The next day, in flourishing high ferns that look like the place the velociraptors attack in the second Jurassic Park movie — “don’t go into the long grass!” — I see my first tick, maybe a more vicious creature than the carnivorous dinosaurs. The minute bug crawls to warm body parts, often the last places washed in the shower, to dive headfirst into skin.
Ticks are cute compared to the swarms of itch-inducing midges, who clearly realize they serve no meaningful purpose and are furious about it.
Islay, and its wee beasties, feast on sheltered city slackers (sic) like me.
But the lively purple heather radiates like no urban colours can. Nature replaces construction. Inspiration replaces haste. Conversation replaces Facebook.
By the serene hush of Loch Uigeadail (pronounced Oog-a-dal), we squeak open Ardbeg bottles named after this body of water. Each dram scuds the palette like a champion boxer’s uppercut, causing involuntary facial tensing to novices. Silky caramel and citrus notes act as smelling salts, pacifying the peaty punch effect to a prospective stagger.
Few things bond strangers like camping and whisky. I start to grasp the antic disposition that brings Czech ramblers and 12,000 tourists — almost quadruple Islay’s population — to Ardbeg each year.
Around a crackling campfire, stories flow as free as the whisky. Ardbeg head warehouseman Dugga Bowman tells me about the resourceful Eastern European whisky enthusiast who arrived at the distillery earlier that afternoon holding only the few possessions he could carry and barely £10 to spend that day.
By outrageous fortune, Marek meets Jackie Thomson, Ardbeg visitor centre manager, who has that motherly quality of ceaseless movement without tiring. She flows like Newton’s Cradle between tables and kitchen, clicking with guests and serving indulgent food that goes directly from farm to fork, water to waistline.
“He (Marek) had an adventurous spark about him, so we sent him on the tour, fed him and packed him a picnic and half bottle of Uigeadail,” Thomson says.
Visitors started arriving about 20 years ago. Distillery manager Mickey Heads thought Ardbeg was being sold when he stumbled upon the first public tours.
He gesticulates, clasps and clutches his hands, speaking through them as much as his gentle cadence. Dressed in smart golfer’s clothing, he guides us through the malting and drying of barley.
Heads learned the business, literally, from the ground up. He started his career cutting slabs of peat, the viscous muddy source of Islay malts’ robust flavour that provokes a vivid olfactory reaction usually reserved for ingrained childhood memories, like a mother’s perfume. A sip and I’m transported to the banks of Loch Uigeadail.
I’m shown a warehouse of brown casks like a pirate ship’s cargo hold and rooms of whitewashed walls where salty sea air from open windows clashes with clammy, smoke-scented vapour.
For all the extensive processes, from mashing to fermentation, Ardbeg whisky comprises only three ingredients: “Water, malted barley, yeast. That’s it,” Heads says. “No sugar, no additives. If you want to drink clean, drink whisky.”
Alas, poor Hamlet was in the rotten state of Denmark, not eating and drinking like a prince on Islay. The trip to Islay was funded by Ardbeg’s parent company, the Glenmorangie Company, which did not review or approve any aspect of the story.