Laphroaig Distillery

The Laphroaig dis­tillery (the name means “the beau­ti­ful hol­low by the broad bay”) was estab­lished in 1815, by Alex and Don­ald John­ston. The ‘John­ston’ broth­ers were actu­ally McCabes, of the Clan Don­ald, who changed their names fol­low­ing the failed Jaco­bite upris­ing, and set­tled on the Isle of Islay.

Their descen­dants ran the dis­tillery until 1887, when it passed to the Hunter fam­ily. They in turn ran the dis­tillery until 1954, when Ian Hunter (who had no chil­dren) died and left the dis­tillery to one of his man­agers, Bessie Williamson.

The dis­tillery was sold to Long John Inter­na­tional in the 1960s, and sub­se­quently became part of Allied Domecq. The brand was in turn acquired by For­tune Brands in 2005, as one of the brands divested by Pernod Ricard in order to obtain reg­u­la­tory approval for its takeover of Allied Domecq.

Laphroaig has been the only whisky to carry the Royal War­rant of the Prince of Wales (the 15-year-old is report­edly his favourite scotch whisky), which was awarded in per­son dur­ing a visit to the dis­tillery in 1994.

Taste

Laphroaig is con­sid­ered one of the most strongly flavoured of all scotch whiskies, and is gen­er­ally aged to 10 years, although the 15 year old vari­ety is not uncom­mon (the 30 and 40 year olds, how­ever, are). Some peo­ple find that a drop of water enhances the peaty aroma of this whisky.

In an attempt to re-create the taste of his­toric whiskies, Laphroaig car­ried out exper­i­ments. Recently the Laphroaig Quar­ter Cask has been intro­duced. By using smaller casks and by avoid­ing chill fil­ter­ing, the Quar­ter Cask Single Malt is sup­posed to taste like the type of whisky that was dis­tilled 100 years ago.

Until 2005, the stan­dard 10 year old bot­tling con­tained an alco­hol per­cent­age of 43%, after which it was changed to the Scotch whisky stan­dard of 40%.

Friends of Laphroaig

In 1994 the Friends of Laphroaig Club was estab­lished, mem­bers of which are granted a life­time lease of 1 square foot (0.093 m2) of land on the island of Islay. The annual rent is a dram of Laphroaig which can be obtained upon vis­it­ing the distillery.