Laphroaig Distillery, Islay

The stills

Apparently, Laphroaig is very controversial. You might, I suppose, call it the Marmite of whiskies, since people either love it or hate it. However, as the tasting, at the end of our visit, revealed, you don’t necessarily have to have the smoky, peaty variant since they do have others. For my taste the basic 10-year-old single malt is admirable and the Lore blend very nice indeed.

My favourite incident from the distillery’s two hundred year history does not concern its long-running, on again-off again, love-hate relationship with neighbouring Lagavulin, but the remarkable coup of persuading US Customs during the Prohibition era that the contents of the bottles was not whisky but ‘medicinal spirit’. Now that’s what I call marketing! Granted, for a coastal distillery there is always going to be a whiff of seaweed in the air that gives a hint of iodine to the drying barley, but even so…

Barley drying

And it’s English barley! Oh dear, I don’t think they should publicise that too prominently. It appears Scottish barley grows in latitudes too cool and northerly to deliver the required yield. (I write this on the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures even in Islay expected to reach 30 degrees Celsius). Maybe by the time global warming means I am growing grapes on Sliabh Mannan rather than making hedgerow wines, Scottish arable farmers will be able to open up a new market?

Laphroaig is apparently the only Islay distillery still cutting the peat for its smoking oven by hand. I don’t know how much difference that makes to the whisky, but it does suggest a respect for the old ways that is important to some customers.

I’m told HRH The Prince of Wales is a fan, so I’m in good company.