"Ingemar" wrote in news:HUJ_d.19956$ snipped-for-privacy@newsb.telia.net:
Started with Isle of Jura Superstition (wrote about this earlier this week) and am just now finishing a dram of 10 YO Macallan.
When I started learning about single malt whiskys, I preferred the highland malts, but now find myself leaning more toward the Islay malts. But my all time favorite is the McMurray & David 13 YO? Highland Park I had last year. Gone now, and not another bottle to be found here on the West Coast of Calif.
"Andreas Gugau" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net...
Oh, I'm interested, very nice indeed! Thanks for sharing. The light on the pic from Talisker is particularly beautiful. Makes me long for going to Scotland...
Which distillery can you (or anyone else) recommend for a visit?
I too have been to all seven Islay distilleries plus Jura. Truly a wonderful trip! It's hard to give any order of preference, except that I have to say that I hold Ardbeg highest (surprise, surprise). The most magic moment, however, was on an evening walk in Port Charlotte when I saw and heard a young guy that was playing bagpipe facing the water of Loch Indaal. Time stopped...
I've never been on an distillery on th mainland though. Have to do that someday.
It's hard to rate the Islay/Jura distilleries up against each other
Some of them have nice shops with good merchandise. (Ardbeg, Laddie and Bowmore)
Some is selling a wider range of whisky very often the same as the ones with merchandise shops
Bruichladdich have whisky you have to pour from the cask yerselves and only availble on the destillery
Ardbeg has a nice Cafe with god food
on Ardbeg you get to taste a lot of different whiskies as well...
The two tours I had on Bunnahabhain was done by one of the Stillmans. He was an excellent guide and spiced up the tour with anecdotes and stuff
Have had a similar experience at Laphroaig.
All in All I find the 8 Islay/Jura distilleries are doing far better tours than any mainland I have been to (which ad up to more than 20).
It is not because the mainlands wants to neglect the visitors, but they get a different numbers of visitors. they have to hire guides and make visitor centres just to be able to cope with the numbers.
If the Stillman/Washmen/Warehouse Man or manager have to do the tours they won't have any time for making the whisky :-)
The tour can be very dependent of the guide. In 1999 I had an excellent tour at Macallan (The guide was good). When I revisited in 2001 it was a new visitor centre and young guides. A bit dissapointing, but my expectations were high. Suddenly they just had a tour like all other places
Take a look at my homepage where i "review" my distillery visits :
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It's just short descriptions ...More to come this May :-)
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