MV Finlaggan

This was our last full day on Islay and we'd booked in for a proper distillery day.  Slighlty unfortunate as it was the best day of the week, but need must when things are booked in advance!

The morning started with a tour of Laphroaig distillery, we've done distillerys tours before and if you've seen one, you're generally seen them all. However, on Islay a few of the distilleries still have malting floors and kilns to dry and smoke their own barley.  Laphroaig doesn't seemed to have changed much in it's many years of existence.  Both me and P having some experience in food production felt like it was quite strange to be standing on a stone floor where the barley is laid out to dry after being wetted to sprout and 'malt'. Literally the grain is just poured out and you can walk around it with your shoes.  The malt men evenly spread it out over the floor and turn it every 7 hours or so.  you can see the footprints in it which is really strange for a foodstuff! 

Best anecdote from the tour was how the guide  liked the old stroy of why the distilleries were painted white with their names written in black on the sides.  She said that it was so that when supplies were broght in by boat that it was easier to navigateto the correct place in the fog.  However, then she was told that this practice only started around 20 years ago so it was all nonsense!  They do look pretty distinctive though.

After the malting floors we also go to go inside one ofthe two furnaces - it you're ever seen a distillery with one of those pointy towers on, that's the vent on the top of the furnace.  The malt is again dropped insdie, spread out and a peat fire is lit underneath.  It felt strange to be inside a furnacne and again walking about where they were about to drop grain, but as I kept on tellning myself, the barley doesn't get eaten, it gets turned into gas twice and then becomes alcohol so sterility isn't a problem.  Is was super interesting to see the process as it was originally done.  The bit we enjoyed the most was watching all the swallows dive bomb around the place.

After a tasting, me taking away a 'drivers pack' of drams, we then headed slightly up the road to Lagavulin where we were booked in for a warehouse tour.  This was less of a tour and more of a tasting, where you get to sample the whisky straight from the cask, in the warehouse.  Luckily again, I got a box to take home driver's drams, but P very much enjoyed the tasting.  I asked some logistics geek questions as I'd become fascinated about storage and transport of the stuff on and off the island and had a good time despite not partaking.  The favourite seemed to be a dram from the red wine cask which is only available on the tour itself as a sample, much to everyone's dissapointment.  It was also fun to hear from the guide that there wasn't really any rivalry on the island between the many distilleries, and that everyone got along well.  It seems like the staff make a good use of their discounts...

After our tours we drove up the road again to Ardbeg where there was a cafe for a late lunch, and then headed further to try and find seals.  There have been quite a few bathing seals on the Islay rocks and they're always fun to see.

For our last evening meal, we got a chinese takeaway from Port Ellen and I'm glad we did as two golden eagles flew overhead on our way back - not a sight you usually see getting a takeway.  The evening was stunning and I'm going to miss Islay.