Islay in December is for either the brave or the foolhardy, and when the locals thank you for visiting at this time of year, they do so in all sincerity.
With a shortage of ferries Calmac has become unreliable at the best of times, and let it be known that December is not the best of times on the Scottish west coast. Knowing this we had booked passage with Loganair and found ourselves with clenched knuckles in a 19-seat Twin Otter hurtling towards Islay over the pitch blackness of the sea.
We took refuge in The Islay Hotel and made ourselves at home in its whisky bar after dinner, with one of the highlights being my first taste of Ardbeg Wee Beastie 5 Year Old paired with Christmas cake made from nuts and dried fruit soaked in same said Beastie. It was tasty enough to warrant seconds along with a cheeky sip from Charles’ glass, though I remain open to the possibility that it may have been a triumph of dessert, or low expectations.
A truly dismal tasting of six and seven year old overwrought cask samples ensued at Laphroaig the following morning, where I was swiftly chided for voicing my opinion: “Our master blender disagrees with you.” Thankfully salvation was found in their very comfortable lounge where we revisited the core range for the first time in several years. Tasting both the Laphroaig 10 Year Old and Batch 16 of the Laphroaig Cask Strength – at one time, my Islay crush – begat more disappointment, but the Laphroaig Select was a sprightly young whisky that was a great handshake for the price, not to mention one that’s far more emblematic of the distillery. But even more impressive was Laphroaig Lore, a superb blend of young and old malts that brought back memories of the long defunct Laphroaig 15 Year Old, a whisky that is near and dear to both my heart and palate.
Our visit to Lagavulin was an opportunity to say goodbye in person to Iain McArthur, an Islay icon who retired this month. After 53 years not only was Iain one of Scotch whisky’s longest tenured personalities, but his ‘warehouse demonstrations’ made him a legend among whisky fans around the world.
As Lagavulin’s longtime warehouse manager, Iain would typically begin his sessions with a talk on maturation and how it affects the spirit, with whisky drawn from cask by the audience and tasted in situ. In the early days the casks were all chosen by Iain starting off with a taste of new make, moving onto a youngling around the 8 year mark (“baby Lagavulin”), followed by adolescent casks, before moving onto samples of pure nectar such as an 18-year-old fully matured in bodega sherry (“mother’s milk”), a 25-year-old from a hogshead, occasionally ending, on a lucky day, with a truly ancient whisky such as a cask from 1966 (“history”). As a point of comparison there would be a commercial sample included, such as the or – once management got more involved – the latest distillery exclusive on sale. Iain quickly became as known for both his outsized wit and generosity, the latter of which gained him an international following, as well as an assistant to ensure that cask samples were duly measured to the millimetre.
Fast forward to 2023 and we were grateful to salute Iain in person upon his departure, but disappointed to see the occasion used as an opportunity to shift dusty overstock. Billed as the ‘Christmas Grand Finale’, the stockings and decorations may have been hung in the warehouse with care, but sadly the Grinch had considerably altered Iain’s script from earlier in the day, when Iain had brought us into the warehouse for a cheeky yet sumptuous dram of Lagavulin aged in French oak for twelve years – one of several samples that were nowhere to be found once the Grand Finale got started.
In their place was not one but two bottles of overstock gathering dust in the visitor centre. Having long tendered his resignation, Iain was blisteringly candid upon introducing the first whisky, coincidentally the same bottle we’d been urged to buy as it would likely sell out that same night: “We’re starting off with a taste of Lagavulin bottled for the 2018 Jazz Festival because they told me that they need to sell these bottles! Well I told them, ‘no problem, just put down the price!’”
Next up was the latest Feis Ile bottling also languishing on the shelves, followed by genuine cask samples that included a 9-year-old hogshead, a 16-year-old refill bourbon barrel – that evening’s version of “mother’s milk” – and a mystery cask, the details of which Iain would not disclose, full stop. The last sample of the night came from an unlabeled bottle that was equally shrouded in mystery, with Iain eventually revealing that this woody, spicy whisky was an 18-year-old Lagavulin finished in an ex-Manzanilla cask.
Days later the other shoe dropped: we had been tasting the cask bottled as Iain’s Farewell Dram, dubbed the McArthur Edition — 194 bottles of which were allocated under cloak and dagger to ‘friends and family’, with 18 bottles reputedly sold through a stealth lottery in the visitor centre for £350 apiece. Time will tell how much it fetches on the auction block, though already having had my taste, I’m fine to let others wrestle in the mud for this one.