On the Oa whisky trail
Alex Kraaijeveld
Whisky enthusiasts visiting Islay don’t have to think long about where they want to go, the only thing they have to work out is in which order Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, Caol Ila and Bunnahabhain are visited. In addition, they will probably wander around what’s left of Port Ellen and as soon as Kilchoman is up and running, the number of working distilleries to visit will be back at 8. The second time I had the opportunity to come to Islay, I had three things on my agenda for the few days we would spend on the island. Number one was to go to Ardbeg and Bruichladdich, as those two were closed when I first visited. Number two was to meet up with Anthony Wills to see what was happening at Kilchoman. And number three was to roam around a part of Islay that has a very different kind of whisky history and which is not normally on the whisky lover’s Islay itinerary. What I’m talking about is the Oa peninsula where illicit distilling was thriving …..
Base camp for this visit to Islay was Port Ellen, and more specifically, Rhona and Hamish Scott’s B&B in Frederick Crescent. Highly recommended for a bunch of reasons: warm and friendly welcome, Rhona’s wonderful breakfast selection, with the option of fresh fish (trout, smoked haddock, kippers) every day, Hamish being a retired distiller from Ardbeg and what better view from your room than road signs pointing to Bowmore and Ardbeg?
To give our trip around the Oa a bit of structure, I had done some homework and collected the names of various places on the Oa that were connected to illicit distilling of whisky. These names came from books, web-sites, etc, and even the folder with whisky information provided at the B&B gave me a few more names to add to the list. Of course, this list has no pretence to be anywhere near complete; by its nature, such a comprehensive list will be impossible to compile.
Our transport for the day consisted of a pair of decidedly dodgy-looking hired bikes. My bike had two problems: the gears weren’t very smooth, which was only a problem when I was going uphill and I didn’t trust the brakes at all, which would only be a problem going downhill. So as long as I stayed on the flat ….. The day would show there wasn’t that much flat around!
Heading west out of Port Ellen there’s only one road leading to the Oa and quite quickly the landscape becomes rougher, more desolate and windswept. Of course, Islay itself is not exactly a bustling metropolis, but the Oa is further from that yet again. It gave me strong feeling of going back in time. Probably the most famous Oa whisky came from Upper Cragabus. According to Neil Wilson, Dunaid, a cask of vatted Islay malt whicky was supplied to the Queen in the 1840s. Dunaid was said to be a vatting of Port Ellen and 21 y.o. Upper Cragabus, which was claimed to be the ‘finest whisky ever produced on Islay.’ Whether this Upper Cragabus whisky was legally distilled isn’t clear. If indeed it was 21 y.o., it is hard to imagine an illicit distiller maturing his make for 21 years (21 years of maturation in the 1840s is hard to imagine anyway).
Upper Cragabus consists of a couple of houses and, no surprise, none has a pagoda roof. Maybe Upper Cragabus whisky really was distilled in one of these houses, but there are of course no signs to indicate this. Roaming further, Fang Dhu and Giol seem to consist of a single farm. Was the whisky distilled in one of the farm buildings or, more likely, somewhere on the surrounding wide moors? That’s the question I kept asking myself when I came to places like Risabus and Glenavulin. Where was the still fired? Probably in different places at different times. Lower Killeyan and the Mull of Oa are mostly mentioned in connection to caves where the whisky was made. Coming to the rugged coast at these places I could see how difficult it would be for the excise to patrol this part of the Oa.
But not only the rocky coast would be a haven for illicit distillers, the area around Stremnishmore is accessed by only the roughest of dirt tracks and any smuggler on the moors there could see excise officers coming from a long way off.
It’s only when you spend a day on the Oa like this, that you fully appreciate how easy it would be, compared to the rest of Islay, to make illicit whisky here. At none of the places that are rumoured to be illicit distillation sites did I see any evidence for distillation and of course I hadn’t expected to see any. And who knows, it might very well still go on today. I wasn’t offered any Oa ‘peatreek’, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it still exists. I haven’t come across any hard evidence that whisky was ever legally distilled on the Oa (though Neil Wilson hints at a legal distillery at Upper Cragabus in 1841) and I’m not aware of any plans to establish one in the near future. But if there is to be a legal Oa distillery to pick up the baton from Upper Cragabus, the illicit whisky heritage of the peninsula will serve as a nice usp.
Now if anyone reading this has a bottle of present-day illicit Oa whisky, I’d of course dearly love to taste it, no questions asked!
© 2005 Alex Kraaijeveld
