NOTE: this is not an official Lagavulin page - it's just something put together by an extremely devoted fan to celebrate a dearly beloved whisky.
Here, in the still mainly Gaelic speaking community around Port Ellen, on the island's south eastern shores, twelve men today craft pungent, dark Lagavulinâ„¢, made on this historic site at least since 1816.
The sea has shaped everything here. A narrow fringe of mica schist and hornblende provides coastal relief from the Dalradian quartzite of the hills above, providing Lagavulin with its romantic bay and the offshore island of Texa.
Above all, Islay means peat. Miles and miles of peat bog in the west of the island provide the raw material whose influence so characterises the south eastern Islay malts, of which Lagavulin™ is perhaps best known. Lagavulin’s™ richly peaty process water runs down the brown burn to the distillery from the Solan Lochs in the hills above the distillery. Though it shares a coastline with two neighbouring distilleries, former owner Peter Mackie took pains to ensure that Lagavulin shares its water with no-one. Rights over the water course and the surrounding land were hotly contested in his day; his persistence secured Lagavulin's legacy.
The barley used to distil Lagavulinâ„¢ is malted at nearby Port Ellen and has a strong peat aroma - it has perhaps twenty times as much exposure to peat smoke as a typical Speyside, Cragganmore. Fermentation of the barley is a slow process, too. Between 55 and 75 hours are taken for the full peat-rich flavour of the locally-malted barley to come through.
The four stills at Lagavulin, two of them pear-shaped in the style inherited from Malt Mill, take this peaty wort and give it all the time and care it deserves. Following the original practice, Lagavulinâ„¢ receives the slowest distillation of any Islay malt - around five hours for the first distillation and more than nine hours for the second is the norm. This long distillation is often said to give Lagavulinâ„¢ the characteristic roundness and soft, mellow edges that devotees rightly prize.
There's nothing rushed about Islay, nor is there about Lagavulinâ„¢; before being bottled, the malt spends sixteen unhurried years breathing the sea-salt air of Islay, mainly in refill European oak casks kept in traditional white-painted warehouses by the sea shore.
Long fermentation, long distillation and long maturation together ensure that Lagavulin develops all of its long, rich, peaty character. It’s is a spirit that likes to take its time. The definitive Islay malt demands nothing less.
“An Islay classic. In the peatiness typical of the island, this is the most powerfully, intensely, dry. It also has smoke, salt and seaweedy notes, though those characteristics are more evident in some of its neighbours.†Michael Jackson, whisky writer and expert.
The Distillery
Situated in a small bay near the south coast of Islay, Lagavulin stands near the ruins of Dunyveg Castle. From here 1,000 Islaymen set sail to fight alongside Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, and in this bay the Macdonalds maintained their power base as Lords of the Isles until finally driven out by the Campbells three centuries later.
Lagavulin legitimately claims to being one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland. Distilling on the site is thought to date from as early as 1742. In the late 1700s it is believed that there were up to ten illicit stills operating in the district. By the 1830s only two distilleries remained in the bay. In 1837 these distilleries amalgamated to form Lagavulin. At this stage the distillery was under the ownership of the Graham brothers and James Logan Mackie.
The Distillery Today
By 1875 Lagavulin was producing 75,000 gallons of whisky.
The Whisky
Lagavulin has been described as the aristocrat of Islays. It has an unmistakable, powerful, peat-smoke aroma. Described as being robustly full bodied, well-balanced and smooth with a slight sweetness on the palate.
