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Bowmore
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The oldest distillery on Islay, where the salty sea breezes drift into the warehouses, giving this whisky its truly distinctive character.
Bowmore (the first "legal" distillery on Islay) was founded in 1779 by John Simpson and is located on the shores of Loch Indaal, near the town of the same name. The distillery remained in the Simpson family until 1837, when it was acquired by the Mutter family. James Mutter was the family's eclectic patriarch: a farmer, a distiller, and also Vice Consul for the Ottoman, Portuguese, and Brazilian Empires at the Glasgow Consulate. James expanded and modernized the distillery. It is said that he used his own steamship to import barley and coal to the distillery and export his whisky to Glasgow.
Over the following years, the distillery changed ownership several times but never ceased production except during the two World Wars (for much of the Second World War, the distillery housed RAF flying boats engaged in operations against German submarines). In 1963, the distillery was acquired by Stanley P. Morrison and James Howat of Morrison's Bowmore Distillery Ltd. In the late 1980s, the Japanese company Suntory Ltd purchased a stake in the business before acquiring it outright in 1994. Despite its many changes of ownership, renovations, and upgrades, Bowmore has preserved its original Malting Floor, and its whisky is still produced using traditional methods. Although, for obvious production reasons, most of the barley now arrives already malted, a small percentage is still spread by hand across the old stone floors and dried over traditional peat fires, giving Islay whiskies their unmistakable character.
If you are still not convinced of the uniqueness of this distillery, consider that one of its largest maturation warehouses (the famous No. 1 Vaults) is the oldest whisky warehouse in Scotland and the only one located below sea level. Its naturally dark, cool, and humid conditions provide the perfect environment for whisky maturation.
Did you know? In the past, as recognition of the exceptional quality of its spirits, the distillery was granted the privilege of producing whisky without paying the government excise duty. Although this privilege has long since disappeared, Bowmore's expertise in whisky-making remains unchanged. Barley, peat, and the exceptionally pure water from the nearby Laggan River have always been the essential ingredients behind the outstanding quality of its whiskies. Bowmore's spirit is produced with a phenol content of approximately 25 ppm.
