Islay Flashback

Every Tuesday is staff training day at K&L, hosted by one of our buyers who must travel from store to store and host an educational seminar. I'm on the hook for today, so I decided to take an in-depth look at Islay with numerous expressions from each distillery and a brief overview of the island's distillation history. It's amazing the selection of malts you can put together just from these eight producers; nine if you can snag a bottle of Port Ellen (which I did because I'm going all the way today). 

I was checking the blog to pull a few pictures from voyages past and I came across this post from May of 2012; hard to believe this was almost six years ago! David OG and I spent the whole day researching Islay's ancient farm distilleries via the map provided in the tasting bar at Kilchoman, digging for clues on the fly, armed with little more than a point and shoot camera. 

That was a damn fine afternoon and Islay still does it for me after all these years. Lagavulin 16, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Bowmore 15 Darkest, Bunnahabhain 12, Laphroaig 10 cask strength, etc. These are the whiskies I cut my teeth on as a Scotch rookie at K&L and they're just as tasty today as they were back then. Islay is like one big greatest hits radio station, continually pumping out timeless hits despite ever changing fashion of pop culture.

-David Driscoll