#42.3 A weekend on Skye

Raasay, paradise

TL; DR: As we woke up on the Saturday we drove to Sconser, to take a ferry to the Isle of Raasay. We visited the distillery, where we had an amazing in-depth 3hr tour and tasting, we hiked and, the next morning, we drove around this truly amazing corner of the world.

(missed Part 2/Part 1?)

Waking up in a place like Carbost is something else. Despite the many campervans, the morning was very quiet, and the only sounds we could hear were the waves gently crashing on the shore. After packing up the bed and before getting on the move, we walked down to the pier, to get some of the fresh (very fresh!) morning sea breeze. We left Carbost after a short stop at the public toilets in front of Talisker distillery. It didn’t take long to get to Sconser, and as we were slightly early, we had time to fix ourselves a coffee with the Bialetti’s moka (well, still Italians after all) before the ferry to Raasay.

It was the first time on the island for us. Although geographically close to the mainland, Raasay can only be reached from Skye. The crossing was about 20 minutes, and once there we parked at the pier, where there are also public restrooms and a 24h open waiting room. The distillery was only 10-minute walking, so we decided to just walk there and see how the day would pan out. Our plan depended on the weather: if it was nice, we would have spent the night on the island, otherwise we would have taken the last ferry. It was a glorious day, so we ended up taking the ferry the next morning.

The distillery is in Clachan, just outside Inverarish, the main village. On the way there, there is an old market/barn building, now mostly abandoned. It won’t be the first one we spot, as the current population is only about 190 people (up by 30 with respect to the 161 marked on the Raasay Single Malt bottles). At that cross we turned right, leaving the Raasay House and Hotel on the left: a huge former mansion, now a tourist centre only open in high season. The main distillery building is called the Borodale House, an old Victorian house that used to be a hotel with a pub before it was bought by the company R&B Distillers to build the distillery. Other than distillery and shop, there are also a hotel, a restaurant and a bar serving hot food until mid-afternoon.

An old Victorian house turned into a distillery…and more.

Being the off season and a Saturday, not all tour options were available, but we found one that seemed great: the Dunnage Cask Tour, which included a tour of the distillery and the bottling plant and a warehouse tasting. As we checked in at the distillery we had a brief scare: our reservation was lost in translation, apparently someone had forgotten to mark it down. The shop manager was very cool about it though, she said there we just needed to wait a bit, and as an apology she offered us a coffee (nice touch). We waited in the bar, taking advantage of the incredible view of Skye from the big windows on a very sunny day. Gabriel, our guide, arrived about 40 minutes later (directly from home). His family moved to the island when he was a kid, and he and his brothers represent a good percentage of the 30-odd distillery workers. This is his side job, while he’s studying to get a medical degree. Gianluigi wondered how his life would be different if, instead of doing chemical analyses on tomato sauce, he had worked in a distillery as a student job.

Gabriel was extremely knowledgeable, and while we visited the various stages of production in the very contained area, he provided a huge amount of information. Starting with the barley, they get 30-ton a month of it from the Kintyre peninsula, and the two strains they are using are Lauriet and Concerto. For the peated runs, they get 48ppm (part of phenols per million) barley, malted using Highland peat from the north-east of Scotland. As for the milling, their grist composition is slightly different from others, with only 9% of flour, 19% of husks, and 72% of grit. Their water source is a 60m deep borehole located behind the distillery.

Mashing happens in a big 1.1-ton stainless steel closed mashtun with the usual three waters at increasing temperature, and they aim for a cloudy worth. Linked to the 5-day production week, fermentation is between 3 and 5 days. They have six stainless steel washbacks equipped with a cooling jacket, to slow down fermentation and allow the (liquid) yeast to extract “as much flavour as possible”. The two stills (wash-, 5000-litre, and spirit, 3600-litre) are made by Frilli, an Italian firm from Siena (like Teeling in Ireland and Inchdairnie in Fife), and the cut they take from the second distillation is usually between 75% and 65% abv. When they do peated runs, they use the cooling jacket in the lyne arm to increase reflux and get a lightly peated spirit. The peated newmake spirit comes out at about 14ppm, which is then reduced to 7-8ppm during maturation. It was actually very informative to get to know the ppm level on the liquid, especially when many distilleries only refer to the barley specification.

The production area includes a gin still, where they run the sourced neutral grain spirit with the chosen botanicals (which, of course, we don’t remember). After the production tour, we took some stairs outside the building, to get to the bottling plant, on top of the hill behind the distillery. There, Gabriel showed us the manual and automatic bottling machines, but also how lots for different markets get labelled and stored until they get shipped. Back to the main building, Gabriel took us on a jeep and drove to the warehouse.

It was the time for the tasting, but first Gabriel let us take the bungs out of the casks…an operation that took us very long, as we are both quite clumsy, but we could finally get a taste of the yummy content. The tasting consisted of six drams, one for each component of the Raasay Single Malt, their main core expression. These whiskies are matured in ex-Rye, ex-Bordeaux red wine, and Chinquapin virgin oak casks, both unpeated and peated. We knew what to expect: during the pandemic we did an online tasting of these six components, although they were not 3-year-old yet, so technically not whisky. This time these are properly whiskies, as the vintage of the cask was 2019 for the unpeated, and 2020 for the peated ones.

We loved the peated chinquapin oak, and the unpeated ex-bordeaux and ex-rye casks – one extra confirmation that, if done properly, young whisky can be delicious too. This range is available to buy at the distillery (when we visited, not the peated ones) bottled in the Na Sia range (Gaelic for “The six”). While sipping the last dram, Gabriel took us around the warehouse, and we found out that they recently started using re-fill casks (initially they used only first fill).

After the tasting we were definitely ready for some food, which we got back at the distillery while trying a nip of the bottlings available at the shop (Slaintè Club bottlings, Year of the Dragon and others, see below in the box).

Left the distillery, it was a very nice evening, so instead of going back to the van we decided to go for a walk to the village and then to the hill behind the distillery, Temptation Hill…despite the cheesy name, it was quite beautiful and very relaxing. Back at the van, we had dinner, but we soon went to bed, after such a great day.

The following morning, we decided to skip the first ferry of the day to drive around the island: we probably drove along all the possible roads, talking advantage of some breath-taking landscapes – from the very north of the Island, along the mighty Callum’s Road, with a very interesting story, to the south and its the old pier (and frankly, quite too many abandoned vehicles…). We finally took the ferry for Skye around midday, and from there we drove almost non-stop to Leith (well, non-stop because most cafes along the road were closed…expect for the Apiary in Dalwhinnie, where we had some delicious cakes).

This was one of the best experiences we had in a while, both the distillery visit (thanks Gabriel!) and the scenery. Raasay is truly a paradise that we’d like to explore more, so we really can’t wait to go back for a holiday…well, and maybe a couple of drams too!

Until next time, slainte.

Raasay Dunnage Cask Warehouse Tour

Price: £75.00 pp (February 2024)

Duration: 2-3 hr

Tasting: 6 drams from the cask, 5y cask strength unpeated ex-Rye cask, ex-Bordeaux wine cask and ex-Chinquapin oak (virgin oak), and peated ex-Rye cask, ex-Bordeaux wine cask and ex-Chinquapin oak

Distillery Exclusive: the Na Sia range (see above), Raasay Scottish Whisky Distillery of the year 2022 (4y and 10 months, finished in Quercus humboltii Colombian oak, 50.7%), Tourism Destination of the Year Celebration (4y, finished in ex-Manzanilla casks, 52%)

Target: whisky geeks

Value for money: good

Highlights: everything

Recommended: a bit pricey but totally worth it!

Link: https://raasaydistillery.com/

#42.2 A weekend on Skye

Talisker distillery, second attempt

TL; DR: After the visit at Torabhaig, we drove north-west towards Carbost for the second distillery tour of the day, Talisker. A slightly less corporate experience than we expected, in a really beautiful spot.

(missed Part 1?)

As we came out of Torabhaig distillery, the weather was slightly nicer: still no breaks in the clouds (those will come later), but at least it wasn’t raining anymore. We gave ourselves just the time for couple of pictures, before quickly jumping on Mr. Vantastic and starting to drive north-west, back towards the main road. We did one stop in the very picturesque village of Isleornsay, near the sea, to visit the shop of the Gaelic Whisky company, Pràban na Linne. It is a small independent bottler, which we learned about when a few years ago a friend gifted us a bottle of Mac Na Mara rum cask finish blended whisky. The Mac Na Mara range also also includes the expressions Classic, Madeira finish and Port finish, all bottled at 40% and non chill-filtered. They also offer another blended scotch, Tè Bheag (40%, non chill-filtered and high proportion of malt whisky), and the Poit Dhubh blended malt range (8y, 12y and 21y), all 43% and, again, non chill-filtered. After browsing the shop (where they also sell gin, food, and souvenirs), we took a Poit Dhubh trio miniatures (which we still have to try).

Back on the road, it didn’t take us much to get to our final destination for the day: Carbost, home of Talisker distillery. We had a sound plan: park at the Carbost pier (where we could spend the night at the cost of £10.00 in the honesty box), visit the distillery and then dinner at the Old Inn.

We knew the road already, as it wasn’t our first time there: we’ve been there when we visited Skye in the summer of 2020, with Gianluigi’s parents, during that short time window where international flights were weirdly allowed without much complication. Back then, we drove to Carbost after a stroll at the Fairy Pools, where we learned that midgies don’t care for long-sleeve t-shirts. By pure coincidence, the night before we’d found out that Talisker was reopening the next day, and that you could book a visit if you “called or wrote an email”. We tried to call several times, but in a typical Diageo disorganised shenanigans it turned out they were only replying to emails (with such short notice, we would have bet the other way round to be honest). So no distillery visit then, but we enjoyed anyway the view and the nice afternoon in the village, before driving back to Portree. This time, however, we are ready to rock!

Second time here, this time ready to visit!

We parked the van at the pier, nor far from another van (and by the time we went to sleep, eight campervans were parked there despite the sign said max 5…guess why “campervanistas” are not very welcome in some places). Next to the distillery we noted a new building, right on the shore: a wooden cottage-ish building, which would have looked more appropriate in a skiing station. We’ll later find out that it is a fairly new space, part of the visitor centre renovaions, and includes a bar and a pop-up restaurant. After the usual selfies and photos, we checked in at the visitor centre. It is quite spacious and modern, with a round fireplace in the middle of it: again, that makes you feel like in a skiing resort hotel, but it’s cosy, nonetheless. In contrast, the shop area was super bright, almost looking like an airport duty free or a department store.

The guide for the day was Florian, who despite the heavily scripted tour, made lot of efforts to make it personal, with some dad jokes but also some “tell-like-it-is” moments. One we appreciated: “’made by the sea’ is marketing language for ‘manufactured in the proximity of the sea’”. Kudos. He gathered us around near the entrance when the time came, starting with the usual safety instructions. In spite being only February, the tour looked fully booked, which surprised us. We left the visitor centre to enter the production building. First, a “demonstration” room where Florian explained the basics of whisky distillation, showed us some peat, and where we could smell some elements associated with the most typical Talisker aromas: pepper, salt and honeycomb.

Covering the basics of whisky production.

Florian also showed us the barley they use, lightly peated, mostly from the Black Isle on the east coast, and malted at Glen Ord maltings. Trucks come in with 30-tonnes of barley (which explains also the terrible state of the tarmac in Carbost…almost Edinburgh-worthy). Once there, the malt gets milled by Milly, a sturdy Porteus machine dating back to 1962.

We moved to the huge mashtun, where barley gets mashed with only two waters (one increasing temperature), similarly to many other Diageo distilleries. This is one of the industry practices to make whisky production more environmentally friendly. We couldn’t visit the fermentation room (where fermentation lasts on average 72 hours but can be anywhere between 65 and 85 hours) because of the carbon dioxide level: first time since we started visiting distilleries, but better safe than sorry we guess. Thus, we moved straight to the very nice stillroom, equipped with two large wash stills for the first distillation, and three smaller spirit stills for the second. The cut they take from the second distillation is from 75% abv to 65%.

Only spot where we could take a picture in the still room.

They have some warehousing space on site, but we couldn’t visit it, as a matter of fact Florian told us he hadn’t been in there himself…not too surprisingly. Anything they produce, though, is put into tankers and shipped to be moved to casks at one of the Diageo’s sites in the Central Belt. We went back to the visitor centre for the tasting, in a purpose built room just behind the bar. We started with the Talisker Storm, one of their non-age statement releases, finished in wine casks: drinkable but not memorable. We then moved on to the Talisker 10, which is a very solid dram in our opinion (some might say that it’s not as good as it was X years ago, but being relatively new in our whisky journey, we have no clue… samples welcome, in case!). We finished with a Distillery Exclusive: this range is quite interesting (not to be confused with the Distillers Edition), as (apparently) distillery staff have some freedom in deciding what to bottle, and it is usually bottled at 48% or above (and whispers says non chill-filtered…). In general, across the distilleries we visited, we had some very good ones (Royal Lochnagar, Lagavulin, Cardhu) and many average ones – the Talisker DE (batch 02) we tried fell into the latter category.

Before leaving the distillery, we got a couple of drams at the bar, Port Ruighe (finished in port casks) and the Distillers Edition (this one finished in Amoroso Sherry seasoned casks), both quite nice.

After the distillery, we went straight to the Old Inn, a hotel and pub just a few steps away. The pub is very nice and cosy, despite being in a very touristy spot it maintains a “local pub” atmosphere. There we met up with Tommy, Gianluigi’s former bandmate who recently moved to Skye, before having dinner and retiring to the campervan after a long, nice day.

Until next time, slainte.

Talisker Distillery Tour

Price: £20.00 pp (February 2024)

Duration: 1hr 15min

Tasting: 3 drams, Talisker 10 (45.8%), Talisker Storm (wine cask finish, 45.8%) and Talisker Distillery Exclusive (48%)

Distillery Exclusives: Talisker DE (batch 02, NAS, 48%, PX-seasoned ex-bourbon and refill casks, £105.00), Bottle-your-own (9y, 54.5%, rejuvenated ex-red wine cask -STR?-, £130.00)

Target: everyone, but mostly tourists

Value for money: good

Highlights: the scenery

Recommended: if you want to tick the box, yes

Link: https://www.malts.com/en-gb/distilleries/talisker

#42.1 A weekend on Skye

From the vPub to Torabhaig

TL; DR: For our traditional wee February Highlands escape, this year we picked the isle of Skye. The first distillery we visited was Torabhaig – a beautiful location and an interesting tour, definitely a great start to the weekend!

In the last few years, we started a new small “tradition”: a trip to the Highlands, visiting some distilleries, in February. This not only comes after the dreaded dry (past years) or half-dry and half-moderated (this year) January, but it is also a great time to go because of the low season, unlike the summer months when a mass of tourists is swarming this beautiful region. Everything is quieter and more relaxed, the way we like it, probably not coincidentally the same way we started to truly enjoy whisky. There are downsides too of course, but we’ll come to these later.

In 2022, we did a daytrip to Pitlochry, to which we attached an in-depth tour at Blair Athol distillery. Last year, we went to the West Highlands, to a spot that has a place in our hearts: the Ardnamurchan peninsula. The trip included a short visit to Tobermory too (we’ll let you guess which distillery we visited). This year, the original choice was Islay, but in addition to the fact that there were no campings open or “official” spots to stay with the campervan (speaking of off-season downsides), one of the four distilleries we haven’t visited yet was closed (Caol Ila), so we decided to postpone. The other choice was another banger of a place that has been on our wish list for a long time: Skye! We’ve been there in the summer 2020, but because it was pandemic time, we couldn’t visit any distillery.

As usual, we planned to leave in the late afternoon evening, so to be ready to get to the first distillery in the late morning the day after. However, a couple of weeks before the trip we had a very pleasant surprise: Roy, from the Aqvavitae YouTube channel, asked us if we could be part of that week vPub. It was a 6 Nations themed blind challenge, where we would sip six drams, one from each nation. It goes without saying, we would participate as the Italy representatives. It was a super fun night, we truly enjoyed the blind tasting, and we found some very interesting new drams (the Armorik 10 in particular, a proper dram). To be able to attend the online event, we booked a B&B near Fort William, as many campsites are closed in February (another downsides of off-season) and the couple that were open had mixed reviews on the WiFi quality, something we couldn’t risk. In the morning, we had a huge breakfast, after which we were ready for a nice day of whisky visits!

The first distillery we hit was Torabhaig, after a spectacular drive on the A87. We arrived there 10-15 minutes in advance, so we could take some pictures (not many, as the weather was quite dire at that point). The distillery is in a very nice spot, very isolated, in the south of the island. The building was completed in January 2017, from restoring the ruins of an 1820s farmstead that in turn used stones from the nearby Caisteal Chamuis. The castle also gives the name to a blended malt sold by the independent distiller Mossburn, owner of the distillery.

A distillery with a castle in the background.

The guide for the day was Lesley, who turned out to be very precise and on-point, making the basic tour very enjoyable also for whisky enthusiasts like us (the fancier tours were not available at the time, another off-season downside). Their production capacity is of about half-million litres of alcohol per annum, and their barley intake is about 28 tonnes every 10 days. It comes from Crisp on the Moray coast, and is usually 77ppm.

After milling, mashing takes place in a copper-closed mashtun, with the usual three waters increasing in temperature. They do up to three mashes/day for a total of 17/week, after which the liquid goes into one of the eight 10,000-litre washbacks (although they fill it up to 8,000), where fermentation lasts about 72 hours. They have one pair of stills (probably the size of the B-listed building wouldn’t allow more), 8,000 and 5,000 litres for respectively the wash and the spirit still. They are called Sir Ian and Lady Noble, from the couple who conceived the distillery project in the first place. From the spirit still they take a cut around 70% abv on average, and a peculiarity is that, similarly to distilleries characterised by a waxy spirit, they mix feints and low wines in the same receiving tank. Very interestingly, for two weeks a year, the two distillers are free to experiment, and these batches will make future releases.

Random picture of a piece of peat because we couldn’t take any in the production area.

After the production tour (where photos were not allowed), we went to the tasting room – no warehouse visit as on site they don’t keep many casks because of limited space. We tried the newmake and the Allt Gleann, their second released single malt (ex-bourbon casks, 46%). Their first bottling, released in 2020, disappeared in a typical “pandemic frenzy”. Since then, they also released a cask strength version of the Allt Gleann (61.1%, mainly ex-bourbon) and, about a month after we visited, the last of the Legacy Series, the sherried Cnoc Na Moine (46%), which we haven’t tried yet.

After the tour, we went back to the shop to try a tiny sip of the Mossburn 12y, and then we had a coffee and a tasty cake at their cafè, before leaving towards our next stop. At the cafè they also sell some of their other whiskies by the dram, in particular the Mossburn range. Overall, we really liked the experience (and great value for money) and this distillery, not just because it’s truly beautiful. The whisky still tastes a bit young in general (well, the few we tried at least), but we can see great things coming from them.

Torabhaig Regular Tour

Price: £12.00 pp (February 2024)

Duration: 1hr

Tasting: newmake and a dram, Torabhaig Allt Gleann (46%, ex-bourbon casks, peated)

Target: everyone

Value for money: very good

Highlights: the building and the scenery

Recommended: yes

Link: https://torabhaig.com/