New Distillery on Islay-Port Charlottle

by **Lawrence** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 4:22 pm

This is from my fellow Malt Maniac Ho Cheng from Taiwan and is posted with his permission. The italics are mine and I think are of particular interest.

Met with Andrew Grey last night.

He said the first Port Charlotte OB 5yo will be bottled as an limited edition in Sep. this year. It will comes only from the sherry cask ones. I tasted the samples from one of the casks, already quite matured, not really like a 5yo malt. They are now filing application to re-open the Port Charlotte distillery. Don't know if it will get approved or not. If yes, they'll start re-building the Port Charlotte distillery using the Lomond still they get from Dumbarton. They don't have plans for additional working force, the team will work shifts between the two distilleries.

by **Bullie** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 4:32 pm

Another distillery on Islay? Getting quite crowded on that small island... :shock:

I wonder what type of whisky they will produce. Will thay add yet another peatmonster or will they join Bruichladdich and Bunnahabhain and their type?

by **Jan** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:14 pm

Since it's the Bruichladdich boys who will be opening it (As I understand the snippet), I guess it will be the (peated) Port Charlotte they will produce there.

Actually Islay has lost more than 13 distilleries apart from those in operation today. (But I'm not sure if they all were operational at the same time.)

Cheers
Jan

by **Deactivated Member** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:17 pm

Any relation to this I wonder?

http://www.whisky-emporium.com/Files/244BruiPortC.htm

by **Deactivated Member** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:20 pm

Sorry, just to add to my last post:

Bruichladdich's first Port Charlotte, distilled 2001, bottled 2004.
So if the new one will be 5 years old and bottled 2006 then it looks like the same distillation, just a couple of years older.

I'm now looking forward to it.
WH

by **Jan** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:26 pm

I'm pretty sure that the bottle shown on the link is not a Bruichladdich release, but a private bottling from one of the privately owned casks.

As far as I know PC has not been released yet.

Cold be wrong though :wink:

Cheers
Jan

by **Deactivated Member** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 5:47 am

That could be the case as I believe it was ONLY originally available in Germany.
However, it is from that first PC distillation.

The label details are:
"HeavilyPeated, single Islay scotch malt whisky, disitlled at Bruichladdich distillery, isle of Islay.

Matured in refill sherry hogshead,
distilled 18 July 2001
bottled 9 November 2004
Cask Number 286
one of 336 bottles
67.3% Vol"

WH

by **kallaskander** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 8:52 am

Hi there,

Jim McEwan told me last year that he was dreaming and thinking about reopening Port Charlotte Distillery which is also known as Loch Indaal Distillery to produce the 40ppm malt Port Charlotte which is now made at
Bruichladdich there again.
He said that he believes that he could create a distillery and a malt which could close the gap Port Ellen left when it was closed.
He could well have taken a major step toward that goal. I wish him the best of luck and look forward to this event if it should come to pass.

Greetings
kallaskander

by **corbuso** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 3:05 pm

And If my memory is not too bad, the Port Charlotte whisky from Bruichladdich is stored in former warehouses of the Port Charlotte distillery. The Port Charlotte distilley was converted some years ago into a youth hostel.

Corbuso
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by **karlejnar** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:07 am

corbuso wrote:And If my memory is not too bad, the Port Charlotte whisky from Bruichladdich is stored in former warehouses of the Port Charlotte distillery. The Port Charlotte distilley was converted some years ago into a youth hostel.

You're right about the warehouse - it certainly contains Port Charlotte stocks including the privately owned casks. Furthermore the distillery's stock of Octomore is placed there.

I seem to recall that the former distillery buildings houses the Islay Museum, but I guess some of the buildings could also house the hostel.

So if they succeed in getting permission to re-open Lochindaal distillery, they would have to find another place for the museum and hostel. Bruichladdich owns the warehouse, but I don't know if they also own the former distillery buildings. I'm not too sure about the point of doing so since they allready make the Port Charlotte malt using the Bruichladdich stills. Why don't they simply add the Lomond still to the Bruichladdich still house if they want to use it. Seems to me to be a much cheaper solution. Think it would be a better use of the money to re-open the maltings.

by **Jeroen Kloppenburg** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:20 am

The top floor is a youth hostel, and the bottom floor is the museum of Islay wildlife.

I have a VR tour of that particular building here if you like to take a look....

by **Deactivated Member** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:21 pm

I asked McEwan about this last night. It's in the "would like to do" stage--no firm plans (or at least that's all he wants to say about it). But he says that they already own some former PC buildings that would be suitable. (My impression of Port Charlotte is that a very large part of the building stock is former distillery buildings.)