Am fascinated by Islay

Should've come here long ago. It's a wild and romantic place, and a real place; not tourist dominated. Yet. The hotels are not what international jet-setters expect. But they are friendly.

Islay lives, clearly, off its whisky. Farming can't be easy and fishing is down to shellfish now and the EC rules are stopping that.

The Malts, here and elsewhere have always interested me. Well, since 1974. After I'd started my van drives to Bordeaux to bring back wine I got it into my head that it would be clever to export something to France rather than go back empty.

So I read a bit and came north to see a grocery business in Tain called Gordon and McPhail. They bought casks from distilleries aged and bottled them. But they wouldn't sell me any.

Twenty years later at my local rugby club in Henley I met a guy who was involved in something called The Scottish Malt Whisky Association, doing a similar thing but more successfully. He explained to me that Scotland was sitting on reserved of hidden 'gold' it did not realise it had.

The malt whisky distilleries of Scotland had got to a state where basically they just supplied the more flavoured element of 99% of Scotch sold around the world which was Blended Scotch. Hardly anyone drank pure malt.

A few lairds, maybe.

The result was that in the vast ageing sheds of the ever vaster international groups who controlled whisky there was gold going cheap.
There were 20, 30, 40 year old casks of malt that were destined to be tipped into some anonymous blend but....amazingly, could be bought for a basic price.

It seems the big groups - constantly 'rationalising' and with a tendency to refer to these glorious distilleries as 'production units' had no interest in all this lovely old spirit. You could buy it for NOTHING. The Groups were so totally focussed on selling their 'Johnny Mackay's Blended' by the millions of cases around the world that selling a few casks of pure 30 year old nectar just didn't occur to them. The accountants just said 'flog it'.

To me it was obvious. We had to do it. So I joined a select band and started buying casks of malt. Sold them under my brand 'First Cask'. Went well. But then we maybe made too much noise and finally ... the giant distiller groups woke up.

The 'Golden Age of Malts was over. Suddenly, all sales of old casks were stopped. But only when there were very few left. Suddenly in the late '90's the Big Distillers started putting out fancy bottles of old Malts and very fancy prices indeed. (£8000 for a bottle is the highest I heard of today).

It looked like we were about to be shut out. I finally understood why Gordon and MacPhail had refused to sell to me.

Ah! well.

We bought a final stack of malt. And we have sat on it for over ten years.
About time we sold some.

Today's visits to Bowmore, Caol Ila, Laphroig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg have inspired me.

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