Birming-Dram

I love Tobermory!  Everything about this distillery is great. I know it's not producing at the moment as they are renovating  but I have heard nasty rumours that renovations = mothballed. I really, really hope not! I visited Tobermory back in November during my last distillery visiting trip north of Hadrian's Wall. It was a very, very wet day when we set off from our base on Loch Awe to Oban then on the ferry to Mull. Mull is an amazing place...very beautiful, with stunning countryside which looked amazing even in the November rain! We headed straight up to Tobermory as time was limited and it wasn't quite birdwatching weather! After an epic pizza with goat's cheese and haggis at The Mishnish pub (highly recommended) we headed off for our tour! Tobermory distillery is tiny! I can't quite believe how they manage to fit all that kit in there! The distillery has shrunk since its heyday as some of the warehousing was sold off for apartments.  The ma...

This week my blog is all about Deanston. A little known and underrated distillery that produces great and varied highland malts. It all started a few weeks ago, I was staying up at Gleneagles and had some time to kill. I thought, how am I best using this time whilst is Scotland? Well, there's only one possible answer...visit a distillery! I started with Tullibarine, which is only a stones throw from the hotel but I missed the tour and they didn't seem keen on showing me much or letting me taste much. They did however suggest that a trip to Deanston was perfectly doable in the hour I had left until closing time. So, I bombed it down the A9 and across country to Doune, the pretty little town in which Deanston is located. Deanston are part of the Burn Stuart Group who also own Bunnahabhain and Tobermory. So now I can say I have a full house of their 3 distilleries having already visited the other two! I don't know what it is about Burn Stuart distilleries but ever...

So for my latest blog entry I fancied something snappy on a topic close to my heart - the wonderful whisky island of Islay! Join me for a quick trip around all 8 Islay distilleries with a handy guide on what to expect from each - particularly useful as a quick intro if you are unfamiliar with Islay. There's notes on the 'house style' of each (although of course each distillery produces a variety of expressions), and I have also added in some recommended drams that shouldn’t break the bank and should be relatively easy to get hold of, intended to give you a great example of what each distillery does really well. So here goes... The Unpeated One - Bunnahabhain House style - Fresh and salty It often surprises people that Islay produces a non-peated malt and whilst Bunnahabhain do produce a smoky dram or two, by far the majority of their output is of the unpeated kind. But overlook these guys at your peril. They produce some great whiskies, especia...