Bruichladdich Distillery

Bruich­lad­dich is located off the west coast of Scot­land. Dis­tilled in the vil­lage of Bruich­lad­dich, it is one of seven from the island, and the only one from an inde­pen­dent dis­tillery. There is some mod­ern con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the distillery’s adver­tised pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the name. They sug­gest brook-laddie, which incor­po­rates a com­mon mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the Gaelic ch element.

The dis­tillery uses one mash­tun (6.2 tonnes) and six wash­backs (together, 210,000 litres). The still is com­posed of two wash stills (together 23,000 litres) and two spirit stills (together 21,000 litres), all heated by steam. The Har­vey Bot­tling Hall has been run­ning since May 25, 2003. This is the only dis­tillery on Islay which bot­tles on-site. In May 2004, a cooper­age hall was opened, and since Decem­ber 2004, the malt used is grown on the island. There have been many vin­tages from the dis­tillery, and a list of more than 200 of them can be found at the Bruich­lad­dich Dis­tillery and Bruich­lad­dich Whisky Archive.

His­tory

Bruich­lad­dich was built in 1881 by the broth­ers Robert William and John Gourlay Har­vey on the shore of Loch Indaal, on the Rinns of Islay, the west­ern­most part of the island. At the time, the dis­tillery was state-of-the-art and the equip­ment con­tin­ues to be used unchanged. Unlike other dis­til­leries, which were often built from old farm houses, the build­ing was erected specif­i­cally for this pur­pose. It was built from stone from the seashore and has a very effi­cient lay­out. At the cen­tre of the build­ings is a yard that holds the kiln to dry the malt and a steam engine to gen­er­ate the elec­tric­ity. The dis­tillery changed own­ers and was out of use from 1929 to 1937. The dis­tillery closed in 1994, but was pur­chased by Mur­ray McDavid on Decem­ber 19, 2000 and com­pletely remod­elled. Jim McE­wan, who had worked at Bow­more Dis­tillery, was hired as Pro­duc­tion Direc­tor. The Vic­to­rian dec√≥r was mostly pre­served. The machines, roast­ing ovens, and pip­ing were com­pletely removed and ren­o­vated by a team of engi­neers (local crofters, who also work in the dis­tillery). In the entire dis­tillery, not a sin­gle com­puter is used (apart from the ones in the offices and the web­cams and such). It is, you might say, a museum of a dis­tillery that is still in operation.

Bruich­lad­dich became the focus of an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion by the (Amer­i­can) Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency because its dis­till­ing equip­ment could also be used to make chem­i­cal weapons. The dis­tillery own­ers learned of this when a help­ful Amer­i­can agent informed them that the dis­tillery web­cams, which she was using to mon­i­tor the facil­ity for WMD pro­duc­tion, had bro­ken. In their honor, Bruiclad­dich issued a lim­ited run of com­mem­o­ra­tive bot­tles. Another lim­ited run was issued when an Islay fish­er­man found a MoD sub­ma­rine ROV, and a minor far­ci­cal affair ensued. Said run fea­tured pic­tures of the ROV on the label.