ISLAY’S ALCHEMIST
Blair Bowman is in awe of Bruichladdich’s master distiller Jim McEwan
Ican imagine that it is going to be hard for Bruichladdich to see master distiller Jim McEwan leave when he retires in July. I’ll never forget the first time I met him. It was my first visit to Islay. I had gone with a group of whisky friends and none of us had visited the island before. To say we were excited is quite an understatement given that Islay is like a kind of Mecca for whisky aficionados.
We arrived on the ferry the night before and had spent the evening drinking Bruichladdich in the bar at the Port Charlotte Hotel. It was a glorious sunny day when we got up early to go to the distillery, our first of the trip. We were doing all eight distilleries in two days, so we had a busy schedule ahead of us.
It was very strange going around the island and actually being at the distilleries that I had seen photos of so many times. The only way I can describe it is like feeling star struck, as if I was seeing a celebrity or famous person in the flesh for the first time.
Bruichladdich was booked as our first visit of the day. We had had an excellent tour of the distillery and were just crossing the courtyard to the gift shop to sample some Bruichladdich when Jim came out of an office, waved and said to us, ‘I’m just heading up to the warehouse, would you like to come with me?’ A question like that only merits one answer. We couldn’t believe it. We’d just been asked by Jim McEwan, the legendary whisky distiller, if we’d like to join him in his warehouse to sample some whiskies straight from the cask.
In shock, we followed him to the warehouse where he grabbed a valinch (a giant pipette used to extract samples from a whisky cask). He said as a group we could choose any two casks to sample. I cannot remember exactly what kind of wine finishes we tasted, but they were stunning – one as dark red as port and the other clear and sparkly as a chablis.
It was at this moment I realised that sampling whisky in the place where it was made adds to the overall experience of tasting whisky in ways that are very hard to explain. But it also made me realise that, even for people who have never made the trip to Islay, in that brief moment when they put a drop of Bruichladdich or another Islay whisky on their tongue, they are instantly transported to Islay.
Still a bit star stuck from getting to experience an impromptu warehouse tasting with Jim, we got back in our minibus to resume our tour of the other seven distilleries that weekend. None of us said so, but it was very hard for the other distillery tours to match our first tour. Jim had spoiled us in every sense.
The experience and memory of meeting Jim at Bruichladdich was profound for me and I hope others can continue to have these experiences following his retirement. His vision and experiments were vital to the success of the relaunched Bruichladdich in 2001. Jim has won countless awards for innovation, with highlights including his creations Bruichladdich Octomore, the most heavily peated whisky in the world, and the Botanist Gin, one of my personal favourites.
No other whisky producer has been as strongly convinced of the merits of terroir as Jim. Working directly with different farmers throughout Scotland, Jim and his team experimented with innovations based around the ideas of grain to glass as they traced every step of the journey that the barley takes before it gets to the distillery.
Having worked in the whisky industry for 52 years, Jim has worked in – and mastered – every aspect of the business during his career. The legacy he leaves behind is great and I hope Jim’s successor can continue to innovate and follow Jim’s mantra of ‘ Working on a dream, chasing single malt rainbows in search of the perfect dram’.
‘I realised that sampling whisky in the place where it was made adds to the overall experience’