Bowmore post online video's to Youtube

I'm on dialup. It would take me 8 or 10 hours to download it. So, I'll have to pass, damnit!

Slainte!

Hi Nick,

Pity your on the DU as it's pretty interesting stuff Interviews with all the production staff on Islay as well as lovely shots of the island.

Slainte!

Maybe I'll start the UL when I go to sleep tonight! Thanks, Ewan.

Slainte!

Thanks for the link, very nice video. Bowmore 12 yrs. is one of my favorite whiskys. It´s cool to see the people making it, but understanding their english is quite hard for non native speakers like me ... very heavy accent ...

/OT/ I always wondered how a new whisky company can survive the "starting period" ... if you want to make good whisky and gain a good reputation i suppose you have to produce whisky that is at least 8 years old ... so this company starts on day 0 and fills ther first barrels, but then they have to wait 8 years to make the first profit ... how do they do it? /OT/

Markus

Thanks for the link! Awesome video. Gets into the whisky-making process pretty deeply: wetting, sprouting, turning, drying, peat-smoking, grinding, mashing, fermenting, distilling, maturing. Didn't really touch on double distilling, or low-wine vs. new-spirt; perhaps they figured that would be getting too technical. But a good overview.

Also, I loved the local flavor of the piece, the ambience of the island, the personalities of the people, and the fact that you don't have to lock your doors at night. A whole different world. I should like to visit the place some day.

It's a good peaty Islay whisky; I'm sipping it as I write this. Not my favorite style of Scotch, but not my least favorite either. None of Laphraoig's brineyness. Some hard-to-define character that's almost nutty.

Yes.

English: "Islay" Scotish: "EYE-lah"

English: "Whisky" Scotish: "WHUS-key"

English: "Bowmore" Scotish: "BOO-more"

English: "Spirit" Scotish: "SPELL-uht"

(not exactly, but something close to those)

I had to listen to some of these several times to understand what they were saying. And some things, I still don't understand.

In the case of Bowmore, they started up in 1779, around the time of the American Revolutionary War. Hence they must have made their first profits around 1789 or so. Maybe around the time the Constitution of the United States was being written. Yep, that must have been a hard decade for them. They probably had to work second jobs to make ends meet. (Of course, those persons have now passed on, and others have now taken their place.)

Shocking how the time scales are so different in a place like Islay, isn't it? In my county in southern California, few buildings remain from my childhood. Most have been torn down and replaced, some several times. Whereas in a place like Islay, I'm guessing many of the buildings (and businesses) are centuries old.