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I’d always sort of imagined whisky distilleries as being bustling places with lots of red-faced Scots scurrying about doing this and that. But actually it doesn’t take many people to make whisky. A handful, really. And if you visit a Scottish distillery this time of year, you’re likely to find it mostly deserted. Or closed (many traditionally do maintenance in August or just shutter the doors completely).

Photo by David Lansing.

That was pretty much the situation at Bruichladdich (brook-laddie) when Charles and I showed up this morning around 10. The gates were open but we didn’t see a single soul on the premises. Eventually we ended up in the little shop that serves as a visitor center of sorts where a middle-aged woman reading a book seemed surprised to see us.

She said the only one around at the moment, other than herself, was one of the four partners, Andrew Gray, and he’d be happy to show us around if she could only find him. So while she’s out looking for Andrew, let me tell you a little bit about this unique distillery.

First of all, Bruichladdich is a bit of a whisky phoenix. Like a lot of Scottish distilleries, Bruichladdich had its ups and downs over the years (there used to be 25 distilleries on Islay; now there are 7).

Bruichladdich itself closed for a spell in the late ‘80s before being acquired by four separate corporate owners (including Jim Beam and Fortune Brands) from 1992 to 1994. But nobody really seemed to know what to do with the company and in 1994, the distillery was pretty much closed down for good, devastating the town on the west coast of Islay.

Then four friends—Mark Reynier, Simon Coughlin, Jim McEwan, and Andrew Gray—got together and purchased the closed distillery in December 2000. After months of restoration work, Bruichladdich officially reopened on May 29, 2001 before a crowd of 3,400 ecstatic islanders (a good chunk of the population). They now have 47 employees, all from Islay, and in just a few short years have won a number of prestigious awards, including Distillery of the Year three times. Kind of a nice story, don’t you think, particularly in an age when most of the Scottish distilleries are now owned by huge international conglomerates like Diageo (in fact, the company, whose philosophy is to be “fiercely independent, non-comformist, and innovative—the enfant terrible of the industry” refuses to join the Scotch Whisky Association because, they say, “We feel our independent status and freedom of expression would be compromised” by the council whose board includes three members from Pernod and three from Diageo).

Anyway, Andrew was eventually rounded up and for the next couple of hours, we sat around with him loosely discussing Islay whiskies in general and Bruichladdich in particular.

“The characteristic of the western islands is they get a lot of rain—as much as 160 inches a year. So the ground is very wet and there are lots of bogs. Peat is a primary heating source and the whisky coming from Islay have a real smoky, peat flavor that people either love or hate—there’s no middle ground with this whisky. Plus all the distilleries are situated by the sea. The casks are all maturing in a briny, salty atmosphere. There’s often salt caked on the outside of the casks. It seasons the casks and gives them a different flavor.”

That said, Andrew said that Bruichladdich, which contains about 5 parts per million of peat, isn’t nearly as smoky tasting as whiskies like Lagavulin and Laphroaig which contain between 35 and 45 parts per million.

Then Andrew immediately contradicted himself by pouring us a dram of a new Islay single malt they’re distilling called Octomore. Now I love Laphroaig but I have to say I could hardly swallow Octomore. Andrew chuckled at my reaction. “That’ll put hair on your chest, eh,” he said. To be sure. The whisky, which Andrew calls “for serious peat freaks,” has a mind-boggling 131 parts of peat per million.

With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, it’s definitely not for everyone—including me. But I love the idea that these “fiercely independent, non-conformist” whisky makers, who brought this distillery back from extinction, have the balls to make it. It’s certainly not something you can imagine Pernod or Diageo ever doing.

Charles and I were both downstairs early this morning, anxious to tuck into the Port Charlotte Hotel’s Full Scottish Breakfast, or FSB as Charles call it. There are small variances from inn to inn, of course, but basically a FSB includes a starter of porridge and perhaps canned grapefruit slices followed by a heaping plate of rashers (bacon), black pudding (blood sausage), sausages, eggs, grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, and Tattie scones (potato scones). The Port Charlotte also offers plate-sized kippers or “Arbroath smokies” (smoked haddock) if you’re not a meat eater. Along with juice and coffee or tea, of course.

As Charles said when our meal arrived, “A pretty standard FSB.”

Over breakfast we talk about our upcoming day which includes a visit to the Bruichladdich distillery and then a short ferry ride over to the island of Jura. When I suggest we take a look at the map to plot our route, Charles waves me off.

“There’s only one road,” he says indignantly. “We can hardly get lost even if we’d like to.”

We’ll see.

Port Charlotte Hotel, Islay.

As we’re driving through the Scottish countryside, I ask Charles if he’s married. “Aye,” he says, “to a remarkable woman.” They live in a little village called Balquhidder (from the Gaelic “Baile-chuil-tir” which means “the distant farm”) a place so remote, he says, that no one can ever find it. “Which is fine with me.”

There’s not much to do in Balquhidder, Charles says, “So we need to entertain ourselves.” He’s in a singing group but his wife can’t carry a tune, he says. So she decided, at the age of 43, to take up the accordion, mostly because if you’re going to learn an instrument in Balquhidder it has to be the accordion since “all we’ve got is the one accordion teacher.”

Fair enough.

The only problem, Charles says, is that the other two students taking accordion lessons with his wife were both under 12. Still, she’d not be dissuaded. After a year or so of accordion lessons, the town had a ceilidh in which Charles was going to sing and his wife was going to play the accordion. Obviously, he said, he was more nervous for her than for himself.

And how’d she do? I asked.

Charles got a big lovely grin on his face. “It was brilliant,” he said.

Crannog restaurant in Fort William.

Later we stopped at the Crannog seafood restaurant in Fort William for lunch, sitting loch-side next to the town pier, relaxing in the sun. I was tempted to get the cullen skink, just to see how it matched up to Topi’s, but decided I didn’t want to smudge my memories one way or the other, so instead I had the house hot and cold smoked salmon and rainbow trout in lemon butter along with a Kelpie Seaweed Ale.

Seaweed ale? It sounds more exotic than it is. The Scots have made beer from local malted barley grown in fields fertilized with seaweed harvested on the Argyll coast for over two hundred years. They say the seaweed (called bladder rack) gives the beer a particular “aroma of the sea” but I didn’t get that. The Kelpie (which is the Gaelic term for the mythical creatures who live in the lochs of Scotland, the most famous being the Loch Ness Monster of course) was dark brown and a little chocolaty with maybe a sniff of smoke in the creamy head. But I didn’t get any seaweed.

Still, it was good enough to order a second. I sipped it out on the deck, wondering how long it might take me to learn how to play the accordion.

I have a new driver, Charles Hunter. Charles is very different from Michael. For one thing, he always wears a tie and sports coat. And he speaks English (which, now that I’ve gotten so proficient at taxi-driver-Glaswegian actually disappoints me). He’s also, shall we say, a more conservative driver. One who knows how to use a seatbelt and a turn signal and—this is the most amazing thing—the brake.

Not that Charles is opposed to airing out his Beemer on a country road, mind you. At one point in the drive he asks me if I’m up for “a bit of an adventure,” and then drops off the main highway onto a narrow one-lane country road following the contours of the Orchy River through Glen Orchy.

It’s what Charles calls a GWR—“a Great Wee Road.”

It rises and dips and curls and spoons in on itself as we pass by fly-fishermen standing in icy waters and hikers on nearby hills and even an encampment of tinkers which, until this moment, I didn’t realize actually existed. I thought they were just something from children’s stories. Like trolls and candlestick makers.

I ask Charles if tinkers are the same as gypsies and he says, “Nay, and if you call a tinker a gypsy, you’ll be asking for trouble.”

Passing through one little village after the other, there is a sameness to the buildings. As Charles says about the houses, “You can have any color you like as long as it’s white and black.”

"You can have any color you like as long as it's black and white." Photos by David Lansing.

Our destination is Islay’s Port Charlotte Hotel, which I’ve chosen because it’s just a short walk down the road from one of my favorite distilleries, Bruichladdich, and because the hotel’s small but marvelous restaurant offers up 107 Islay whiskies (including 22 from Bruichladdich alone).

Charles knows I have my heart set on dinner in Port Charlotte and worries that his diversion down the GWR means we might not arrive at our destination before the dining room closes, so while we are on the CalMac ferry from Kennacraig to Islay, he calls the hotel and puts in our order for steamed mussels, Scottish salmon, and a bottle of French viognier (preceeded, of course, by a dram of a rare Bruichladdich whisky called Cairdean—Gaelic for family—that has been aged for 14 years in a sherry cask).

I think Michael was right: Charles and I are going to get along famously.

In the morning, after a breakfast of blood sausage and French toast, we motor past the Isle of Soay and shrouded Cuillin Hills with waterfalls spilling tinted water the color of whisky from the peaty hillsides into the sea. By noon we are anchored at Loch Harport and the Talisker Distillery, the end of my Classic Malt Cruise.

Water, colored by peat, the color of whisky. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

Graham and I spend the afternoon with Charlie Smith, the genial distillery manager, drinking and talking about the whisky Charlie makes. Whisky may have come from the Irish, Charlie says, “but it’s the Scots who took it to heart. Life here is hard and just making a living in Scotland has always been difficult. I suppose you could look on whisky as being God’s consolation to the Scots. It brings us together and gives us warmth on bitter winter nights.”

Charlie Smith of Talisker. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

That night, the distillery puts on a ceilidh up on the hill overlooking the calm sea as slow-flying gulls swoop low over the silvery surface. I sit outside, despite the midgies, and soak it all in. Beside me are Charlie and Graham.

Inexplicably, I feel melancholy. Sad to be off the boat, I suppose. End of the whisky cruise and all that. I even feel like I’m going to miss Graham. In fact, I have this sudden crazy notion to call Michael back in Glasgow and see if he’s able to drive me around Scotland for a couple more weeks. Or maybe I should just stay here, in Loch Harport, and do something purposeful with my life like be a shrimp fisherman. Or open a tapas bar. Everything here just feels so…peaceful. And in its proper place.

View of Loch Harport from Talisker. Photo by David Lansing.

Perhaps sensing my mood, Charlie, who, with his flashing blue eyes and firm chin looks a bit like a kilt-wearing Paul Newman, holds his glass of whisky out in front of him and says, “Sitting here, it’s easy to forget what year it is. It’s just the way it was a hundred years ago. It’s not hard to imagine someone sitting here, a very long time ago, looking at this same view, taking warmth and solace from a wee dram of whisky, just as we’re doing.”

I gently stick an elbow in Charlie’s side, ribbing him for being sentimental. “That’s just the whisky talking,” I say.

“Nay, it’s true,” says Graham. “There’s a kind of sacred notion in the drinking of whisky in a place like this.” Then he pauses for a moment as the three of us take in the magnificence of our surroundings. Far away in the distance, I hear the bleat of a lamb. “I mean, here we are,” he continues in a low voice, “looking at the ageless sea and the green hills, sipping our whisky, and it’s all just…heartbreaking, isn’t it?”

Ever the wise guy, I tell Graham that I’m considering staying here and opening a tapas bar.

“You should think hard about it,” Graham says in all seriousness. “Really hard.”

And for a fleeting moment, I do.

That night, after the ceilidh, I call Michael. He can’t drive me around next week but he’s got a buddy who’s available.

“His name is Charles,” Michael says. “I should think you two will hit it off just fine.”

I’m looking forward to it.