Islay, Scotland

Travel, food, and drink notes from a small island ...

A salmon-rich river flows past the Islay Woolen Mill.

We arrived Islay, Scotland, a small island in the Inner Hebrides, at 6 pm after a twenty-two hour journey (JFK—>Amsterdam—>Glasgow—>Islay), in time for our 7 pm dinner reservation. Islay time. I snapped a pic of Ann on the tarmac with the ocean, beach, and surf behind her, then we tugged our roller bags across a two lane road, up a long gravel driveway to our accommodations, the lovely BnB, Glenegedale.

Our mission was to explore the land and water where our favorite spirit, the peated, single-malt whiskey’s are made.

Our BnB—across from the tiny, two-flights-a-day on the beach—awaited beneath an enormous sky.

In the mid-1980s, my father gave me a taste of Laphroiag. I’d never had anything like it. Nor had he. I don’t know how he found it, but he loved it so much, he wrote to the distillery. They wrote back saying, “Thanks, most American’s hate the stuff!” Single malt whiskies had been available in the US since the 1960s when Glenfiddich began marketing the stuff here. But the best single-malts didn’t become popular in The States until the 1990s, so I applaud my father for this extraordinary find, and the palate, to know how absolutely unique it was. From then on I sought out the smokiest whiskies I could find, the whiskies of Islay.

Forty years later, my beloved said, “Well, let’s just go there.”

There’s a kind of genius in that simple command. Go there.

The Laphroaig distillery.

Ann, a couple decades earlier, had been in Scotland, found a pub to shelter from the rain. Cold and damp she asked for a whisky; the barkeep slid her a glass and said, “You’ll be wantin’ a Talisker.” One sip and she was hooked on peat—that was her intro to this particular smoke. See this post on Talisker’s home, Isle of Skye.)

So that was our quest. To find the source of this extraordinary spirit.

The road to the northeast corner of the island, home of three distilleries, among those Ardnahoe, just six years old, and one of our favorites, Bunnahabain.

Travel, of course, is not simply to indulge in our gluttonous pleasures (though there was plenty of that). Travel is to meet people, see places and cultures, broaden our perspective to better understand our small place in this big world.

What follows are some of the places we visited on the island, what we ate, people we met, the vistas. Scroll to the bottom for a full list of all, with addresses, links, and a Google map, including advice on traveling here and getting around.

---

Sidenote: I’m excited to announce that I’ll be doing a 2-hour class called Five Things I’ve Learned About Writing By Writing About Food. My video on the My Five Things site outlines the class. If you’re a writer, I hope you’ll join us!

---

Arrival Islay …