Friday, June 23
Today we woke up to another beautiful, overcast day in Fort William. We had another delicious B&B breakfast – full Scottish breakfast for Fjord (including haggis) and French toast with fresh fruit for me.
After breakfast we set off on our ~3 hour drive south to Glasgow, first stopping at the local Ben Nevis distillery. This was our first whisky distillery tour, and it was neat to learn about the process: malt the barley (let it germinate), roast and dry the barley (if you use peat as fuel, this is when the whisky gets its peaty flavor), soak the barley, add yeast and let it ferment, distill the remaining liquid, and age it in oak barrels previously used for other spirits – usually bourbon, but the barrels could also come from sherry, wine, or anything else with a strong flavor. Then bottle and enjoy! We were surprised to learn how much of the process is similar to the beer brewing Fjord and his friends do at home. The liquid you get after fermentation is basically strong beer. It’s the distillation and aging process that makes it whisky.
After our tour we went to the gift shop for our tastings. I’m still not a whisky fan, and since I would be doing the long drive today Fjord was happy to finish mine. 🙂 Unfortunately he did not like the standard Ben Nevis as much as the MacDonald, and the shop had just sold their last bottle yesterday! Disappointed, Fjord looked around the shop trying to decide if there were any other whisky souvenirs he might want. Unable to find one, we were about to purchase a minutare bottle of the MacDonald – when the delivery truck showed up full of full-sized bottles! We left with the first of our whisky souvenirs and one very happy Fjord.
The drive to Glasgow was absolutely beautiful. Scary driving aside, I enjoyed it as much as possible. We drove across wide open meadows, around steep peaks, by large waterfalls, and through swampy bogs. The main road goes right through the other of Scotland’s National Parks, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. (We already drove through the other park, Cairngorms on the way up to Inverness.) We stopped at one of the cafes in the park for a quick lunch on Loch Lomond before continuing on our way. This loch is at the base of Ben Lomond, which I assume is the namesake for the area in the Santa Cruz Mountains at home. For those brushing up on your Scottish at home, Ben = mountain, Loch = lake. I believe those words are from Gaelic, however there are signs all of the place with Gaelic translations that are slightly different, so perhaps they’re the modernized versions or English pronunciations.
We arrived at our Glasgow airport hotel in the early evening. While it would have been nice to explore Glasgow, we were pretty tired from all the travel and opted for a early night at the hotel restaurant and relaxing before the next leg of our journey. In the morning… off to Islay! Fun fact, the hotel and airport are actually in the town of Paisley, which made Fjord quite happy. 🙂
Saturday, June 24
We woke up quite early for our 8:30am flight to Islay. Turns out the Glasgow airport is very small and you don’t actually need to arrive too early, at least if you’re flying FlyBe, the only airline that does the twice-daily 25-minute flight to and from Islay. In fact, to manage crowds the airport won’t let you check in more than 2 hours before your flight (including checking your luggage), and they only post gate info 30 minutes before flying. This strategy keeps all of the travelers in their duty free mall and food court, since you have no idea which direction your gate will be. Very clever.
After a little while we boarded our tiny flight (35 seats!) to Islay. It was a very quick flight through the clouds before we landed on the wide, grassy peat plains of the island. We walked down the stairs from the plane door and into the single door of the airport terminal where our luggage popped out on a conveyor belt right next to us. Five minutes at the car hire counter and we had a little red VW 2-door mini hatchback to take us around the island. Google maps was a little iffy on directions, but the map/GPS function worked well so we were able to make our way to Ardbeg by 10am.
Our tour wasn’t until 11, so we got a pot of green tea and looked around the shop. There were some interesting history of whisky books. An hour later we met up with our enthusiastic young tour guide. She was probably about my age but clearly had much more experience with whisky! She took us out to the water’s edge where you get a great view of the Ardbeg sign. The tour around the distillery wasn’t too unlike Ben Nevis, but we definitely got a stronger sense of history and culture. Like seemingly all distilleries on the island, Ardbeg officially started distilling in 1815 when an act of parliament allowed legal whisky sales through a permitting process, even though they had been distilling whisky for years before that. We saw and tasted the dried, malted barley that they buy from the giant malting plant in Port Ellen, just down the road. We learned about the different levels of peaty-ness, measured in PPM. (Parts per million of what? Smoke?) We saw the fermentation tanks, proudly made of wood unlike most distilleries that now use stainless steel. We saw the large stills for distillation, which are the same general style but have a slightly different shape at each distillery. Ardbeg’s were shaped like the neck of their bottles. Our guide also let us taste the fermented liquid before it was sent off to the distillery. It was like a sweet, flat, warm, bitter beer. Pretty gross.
After the tour we went to a tasting room where we had a choice to sample from three different bottles. I asked the guide what would be a good whisky to start with if you’ve never had it before, and she pulled a 4th bottle off the shelf behind her: Dark Cove. She said it was mellower and sweeter with less peat – a good starter whisky, or the “lady whisky” as some call it. My feminist self was not thrilled with this title, but she was right about it being much mellower and sweeter than any of the stuff Fjord has convinced me to taste at home! It was still very strong, but I ended up liking it ok and finishing the sample. It turns out that 1) if you are not normally a big drinker, and 2) if you haven’t eaten anything since that latte you had for breakfast 4 hours ago: one sample of whisky is enough to make you quite tipsy! I was getting into it now though (and we were sitting down, so I couldn’t really tell), and I enjoyed tasting two other samples as we chatted about different whiskies Ardbeg has produced. Around 12:30 we stood up to go back to the cafe for lunch, and that was when I learned exactly how strong whisky is! Fjord was a helpful crutch though, and we made it the 20 feet or so to the cafe. Woo!
We had a delicious lunch – steak pie and tatties for Fjord, wild mushroom risotto with pea shoots for me. In the cafe you are allowed to ask for a free dram to try with your meal. Fjord got to enjoy both while I worked on sobering up. Eventually our exciting morning wore off and I was able to drive us 5 minutes down the road to our lovely little B&B. This time it was my turn to take care of Fjord! We arrived at the Old Excise House on Laphroaig property and settled into our lovely room. This was definitely our favorite home away from home on our trip. Emma and Ron were fantastic hosts, the room was great, we had a nice large bathroom with a luxurious bathtub, breakfasts were delicious, and the house was in the perfect location for us – right next to a beautiful walking path between the bluffs and the sea. Fjord didn’t mind that the walking path happens to pass by Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg. Personally I preferred the sheep and cattle to our left and the seals and swans to our right.
After resting a bit we headed into town for a quiet dinner at the Sea Salt Cafe, one of the two restaurants in Port Ellen. Islay is a beautiful island and I would definitely go back, but food choices are quite limited! They are still learning about vegetarians over there, unfortunately, but I managed to find enough to eat. Emma and Ron made sure I had big, healthy breakfasts!
Hawthorne Adventures 
