Ardbeg, at last

Back Blipped

We had both been very much looking forwards to day four of the tour as we were booked in for a tour of the distillery followed by a major whisky tasting session.  Ardbeg is my favourite brand of whisky.

Ardbeg itself is 3 miles from Port Ellen, so we chose to walk there, stopping at the Laphroaig and Lagavulin distilleries on the way to pop into their visitor centres and to take photos.  One of my extras shows the pair of us having just arrived at Ardbeg.

They have a very nice cafe at Ardbeg so we chose to have lunch there.  The walk having helped to settle the lovely cooked breakfast that our B&B had provided, we just about managed a light lunch ;-) 

We noticed before lunch that they still had some 2015 Ardbeg Supernova for sale in their shop.  This is famous stuff if you like your whisky, but at over £200 a bottle completely out of both of our leagues.  When we wandered back into the shop after lunch all 6 bottles (the entire remaining stock of Supernova) had been sold.

Our tour guide was a knowledgeable and entertaining young lady called Dionne.  We went away having learned fall sorts of interesting information about the way our favourite whiskies were created.  To top it all as part of our tasting session we got a dram of the 2014 Supernova and a dram of Ardbeg Alligator (both long unobtainable and very rare indeed).  So very happy bunnies indeed, we went to get our taxi.  We had ordered a taxi because it was forecast to rain heavily.  

Heavy rain was an inadequate description for what was falling from the skies above Ardbeg at this point of the early evening.  Unfortunately our taxi failed to appear, Mark and I having taken shelter underneath an external staircase which kept off the worst of the deluge.  After half an hour I popped back to see if I could use the distillery's land line, as we could not get any mobile phone signal.  The very nice lady at Adrbeg instead offered to drive us back herself, as she was about to leave work.  She had just got her car out, when the taxi driver arrived (suitably apologetic) and all was well.

We really noticed how friendly and helpful folk were on Islay, and it is worth remarking on.  In my experience it is rare that you go somewhere as a tourist and get made to feel quite as welcome at we were made to feel.

That evening we again spent in the local Ardview Inn, chatting to locals and other visitors alike and having a very convivial time.  To our amazement at around 11:30pm the local young folk arrived including Dionne and many of the people we had seen working at the Ardbeg distillery in the day.  They proceeded to have a high old time, we left at about 12:30 but I understand from speaking to the bar staff the next day, that the partying continued well into the early hours.   

Once again, we went back to the B&B grinning like idiots :-)

Mark's take on day four is here