Whisky Island: A Portrait of Islay and its Whiskies

by Andrew Jefford

Maybe that is why he sees the whiskies not as investments or products of industry, but as having personalities: Ardbeg is ‘a powerful engine, quietly purring’, Bowmore a ‘chameleon’, Bruichladdich ‘sensual and immediate’, Bunnahabhain ‘taut, meditative, masculine, elegant’. He notes Caol Ila’s ‘sinewy, catwalk elegance’, how Lagavulin is ‘a big beast, yet well fed . . . inclined to play’, and then throws himself into young Laphroaig’s wild mix of ‘fierce frankness’, which somehow remains ‘grand and stoic’.

‘That was what kept you going. You had one first thing in the morning; one at lunchtime; one at five-o-clock, and one at about eight-o-clock at night. It depended what sort of mood the brewer was in. The brewer at the time hadn’t got much of a clue; if you had an argument with him, that was how he settled it. “You’ll be needing a dram” – and that was it, settled. Lots of the boys would start an argument just to settle it like that.’