Bowmore Distillery

Bow­more (pro­nounced “Boh-more”) is a dis­tillery that pro­duces sin­gle malt scotch whisky on the isle of Islay, an island of the Inner Hebrides. The dis­tillery, which lies on the South East­ern shore of Loch Indaal, is one of the old­est in Scot­land, hav­ing been estab­lished in 1779. The dis­tillery is owned by Mor­ri­son Bow­more Dis­tillers Ltd, a hold­ing com­pany owned by Japan­ese drinks com­pany Sun­tory. Mor­ri­son Bow­more also own the Auchen­toshan and Glen Gar­i­och dis­til­leries and pro­duces the McClelland’s Sin­gle Malt range of bottlings.

His­tory

The Bow­more Dis­tillery was allegedly estab­lished in 1779 by a local mer­chant, John P Simp­son, before pass­ing into the own­er­ship of the Mut­ter fam­ily, a fam­ily of Ger­man descent. James Mut­ter, head of the fam­ily also had farm­ing inter­ests and was Vice Con­sul rep­re­sent­ing the Ottoman Empire, Por­tu­gal and Brazil through their Glas­gow con­sulates. There are no records that pin­point the date Mut­ter acquired the dis­tillery from Simp­son. Mut­ter would intro­duce a num­ber of inno­v­a­tive processes to the dis­tillery dur­ing his tenure, and he even had a small iron steam ship built to import bar­ley and coal from the main­land, and to export the whisky to Glas­gow. A bot­tle of Bow­more Sin­gle Malt sold at auc­tion dur­ing Sep­tem­ber 2007 for £29,400.

The dis­tillery was bought from the Mut­ter fam­ily dur­ing 1925 by J.B. Sher­iff & Co and remained under their own­er­ship before being pur­chased by Inver­ness based William Grigor & Son, Ltd. in 1950.

The dis­tillery, like most in Scot­land, was moth­balled dur­ing the World Wars, with the Bow­more Dis­tillery host­ing the RAF Coastal Com­mand for much of World War II, Coastal Com­mand oper­ated fly­ing boats from Loch Indaal on Anti-submarine war­fare missions.

Stan­ley P Mor­ri­son and James Howat formed Stan­ley P. Mor­ri­son Ltd. in 1951, and this com­pany, formed Morrison’s Bow­more Dis­tillery, Ltd. in 1963 in order to takeover the Bow­more Dis­tillery. Stan­ley P. Mor­ri­son died in 1971 and con­trol of the com­pa­nies passed to James Howat and his fam­ily. The com­pany name has changed slightly and fol­low­ing minor restruc­tur­ing, the dis­tillery is now owned by Mor­ri­son Bow­more Dis­tillers Ltd., which is ulti­mately owned by the Japan­ese dis­tiller Sun­tory, fol­low­ing their takeover of Mor­ri­son Bow­more Dis­tillers Ltd., dur­ing 1994. Sun­tory had pre­vi­ously been a share­holder in Mor­ri­son Bow­more for sev­eral years.

Pro­duc­tion

Bow­more Dis­tillery sources as much bar­ley as pos­si­ble from on the island of Islay, how­ever there are insuf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties pro­duced to sat­isfy the dis­til­leries demand, and bar­ley is also imported from the main­land. The dis­tillery retains a tra­di­tional floor malt­ing but this also lacks suf­fi­cient capac­ity and the bar­ley imported from the main­land is nor­mally already malted.

The dis­tillery has an annual capac­ity of 2,000,000 litres, with fer­men­ta­tion under­taken in tra­di­tional wooden wash­backs, before the liq­uid is passed through 2 wash stills and then through 2 spirit stills.

The waste heat from the dis­til­la­tion process goes to heat a nearby pub­lic swim­ming pool which was built in one of the dis­til­leries for­mer warehouses.

Mor­ri­son Bow­more bot­tles all whisky pro­duced at Bow­more Dis­tillery and their other dis­til­leries at a facil­ity in Spring­burn, Glasgow.