BOOKINGS BEING TAKEN FROM 10AM 1ST APRIL BY PHONE ONLY
Monday 26th May
9am ‘Off-Road Dramming’
Your journey of discovery starts at the distillery itself with a taste of our unique 100% Islay produced from barley to bottle onsite at Rockside Farm. You will then be taken in our new Kilchoman Land Rover to the sites that inspired the whiskies we make today. An opportunity to taste Machir Bay 2014 on the beach itself, Loch Gorm Second Edition by its peaty shores, and you will be among the first to visit our brand new warehouse sited at Conisby for a taste directly from our maturing casks. Finishing with a look at the changes we’ve made at the distillery this year, you will then enjoy lunch in our café – traditional Cullen Skink with a Panini of your choice, our home made lemon drizzle cake served with our New Make Spirit, and a local Islay ale.
(Maximum 6 people – duration approx. 3 hours – includes lunch)
£100 (Deposit £20 at time of booking)
2pm Manager’s Tour
Enjoy an indepth explanation of our single malt whisky process, taste new make spirit and cask samples, learn of the changes we’ve made at the distillery recently and of our plans for the year ahead.
(Maximum 12 people – duration approx. 2 hours)
£25 (Deposit £5 at time of booking)
Tuesday 27th May
9am ‘Off-Road Dramming’
Your journey of discovery starts at the distillery itself with a taste of our unique 100% Islay produced from barley to bottle onsite at Rockside Farm. You will then be taken in our new Kilchoman Land Rover to the sites that inspired the whiskies we make today. An opportunity to taste Machir Bay 2014 on the beach itself, Loch Gorm Second Edition by its peaty shores, and you will be among the first to visit our brand new warehouse sited at Conisby for a taste directly from our maturing casks. Finishing with a look at the changes we’ve made at the distillery this year, you will then enjoy lunch in our café – traditional Cullen Skink with a Panini of your choice, our home made lemon drizzle cake served with our New Make Spirit, and a local Islay ale.
(Maximum 6 people – duration approx. 3 hours – includes lunch)
£100 (Deposit £20 at time of booking)
1pm Manager’s Tour
Enjoy an indepth explanation of our single malt whisky process, taste new make spirit and cask samples, learn of the changes we’ve made at the distillery recently and of our plans for the year ahead.
(Maximum 12 people – duration approx. 2 hours)
£25 (Deposit £5 at time of booking)
3.30pm Conisby Warehouse Experience
Our first ever tasting at the new warehouse will include sampling from a number of casks, at various stages of maturation, whilst enjoying fine views over the Loch Indaal.
(Maximum 25 people – duration approx. 90 minutes)
£30 (Deposit £10 at time of booking)
Wednesday 28th May
9am ‘Off-Road Dramming’
Your journey of discovery starts at the distillery itself with a taste of our unique 100% Islay produced from barley to bottle onsite at Rockside Farm. You will then be taken in our new Kilchoman Land Rover to the sites that inspired the whiskies we make today. An opportunity to taste Machir Bay 2014 on the beach itself, Loch Gorm Second Edition by its peaty shores, and you will be among the first to visit our brand new warehouse sited at Conisby for a taste directly from our maturing casks. Finishing with a look at the changes we’ve made at the distillery this year, you will then enjoy lunch in our café – traditional Cullen Skink with a Panini of your choice, our home made lemon drizzle cake served with our New Make Spirit, and a local Islay ale.
(Maximum 6 people – duration approx. 3 hours – includes lunch)
£100 (Deposit £20 at time of booking)
11am Tour with Founding Director Anthony Wills
Enjoy an indepth explanation of our single malt whisky process with Anthony himself, taste new make spirit and cask samples, learn of the changes we’ve made at the distillery recently and of our plans for the year ahead.
(Maximum 12 people – duration approx. 2 hours)
£25 (Deposit £5 at time of booking)
Thursday 29th May – Kilchoman Open Day
11.00am Be a Bottler
Join our bottling team and experience the time and care that goes into every bottle of Kilchoman. Fill and label your own bottle of Machir Bay using our hands-on approach, and get it authenticated and signed by Anthony Wills or John MacLellan.
(Maximum 12 people – duration approx. 45 minutes – includes authenticated and signed bottle of Machir Bay)
£50 (Deposit £10 at time of booking)
12.00am Manager’s Masterclass – Our Expressions Deconstructed
After tasting our 2014 releases of 100% Islay, Machir Bay and Loch Gorm you will discover each of the cask types used for those expressions, tasting samples at cask strength to understand what each contributes to the final taste profile. A sneak preview too of some Port Cask samples to be used in our brand new release due out in September later this year!
(Maximum 30 people – duration approx. 1 hour 15 mins)
£30 (Deposit £5 at time of booking)
2.00pm Club Members’ Masterclass – The Story of 100% Islay
In this masterclass, you will hear about we came to make our unique 100% Islay whisky produced using barley from Rockside Farm itself. With an indepth explanation of how our barley is processed separately throughout production, we will use comparative tastings of each stage to examine the differences between it and the commercial malt from Port Ellen that we use for our more heavily peated expressions. Understand the challenges of malting through to bottling, whilst sampling both Kilchoman and ‘Port Ellen’ wash, new make spirit and cask samples of the two at various stages throughout maturation in the quest to identify the aromas and flavours that make our 100% Islay unique.
(Maximum 30 people – duration approx. 1 hour 15 mins)
£25 (Deposit £5 at time of booking)
3.30pm Be a Bottler
Join our bottling team and experience the time and care that goes into every bottle of Kilchoman. Fill and label your own bottle of Machir Bay using our hands-on approach, and get it authenticated and signed by Anthony Wills or John MacLellan.
(Maximum 12 people – duration approx. 45 minutes – includes authenticated and signed bottle of Machir Bay)
£50 (Deposit £10 at time of booking)
Still House Open House
Throughout the day you will be invited into the stillhouse to chat to our production team and get up close whilst our new make spirit is being made.
(Maximum 12 people – no pre-booking required)
No charge
Tutored Tastings of the Kilchoman Range
Available throughout the day – no pre-booking required
£5
We look forward to seeing you then!
We are pleased to say the visitor centre and cafe is now open on Saturdays! Come and have a look around Islays farm distillery and sample a few of the latest releases.. Or if you’re hungry the cafe will be serving cakes, soups, paninis and our famous Cullen Skink.
One of the stops on Anthony and Kathys recent tour of Australia was The Oak Barrel in Sydney where Anthony sampled several releases both new and old –
http://whiskyledger.com/2014/03/22/kilchoman-tasting-with-anthony-wills/
This year’s clothing range is now available including eye catching new t-shirts, ladies bodywarmers and our stylish new rugby top.
Please visit our online shop for more info – kilchomandistillery.com/whisky-shop/clothing
20% OFF SALE on all old stock.
We are happy to announce a new Kilchoman release named Coull Point. Continuing the tradition of naming our whiskies after landmarks near the distillery, Coull Point is rugged headland just half a mile north of Machir Bay. Coull Point is a limited edition bottling exclusively available from World of Whiskies duty free shops at airports across the UK.
Anthony and Kathy are currently halfway through a tasting tour of Dubai, India, New Zealand and Australia. They are spending three weeks on the road hosting tastings, visiting customers and attending whisky festivals. Here are a few examples of what they have been getting up to, including Anthony making an appearance on the channel 3 news at Dramfest..
http://www.3news.co.nz/Christchurch-host-to-largest-Southern-Hemisphere-…
http://mycustardpie.com/2014/02/27/kilchoman-whisky-tasting-in-dubai/
1. Kilchoman is named so because the distillery sits in the parish of Kilchoman, Kilchoman Church is only a few hundred metres from the still house.
2. It takes 17 days to transform harvested Kilchoman barley into new make spirit which is filled into casks
o 1 day drying the harvested barley
o 2 days steeping
o 5 days malting
o 1 day peating
o 2 days Kiln drying
o 1 day mashing
o 4 days fermenting
o 1 day distilling
3. Only 10 casks of Kilchoman were filled in 2005, the distillery’s founding year.
4. Kilchoman is approximately 1/10th the size of Islay’s next smallest distillery and 1/50th the size of Islay biggest distillery.
5. Kilchoman is one of only 7 Scotch whisky distilleries practicing traditional floor malting.
6. Kilchoman was the first distillery to be built on Islay for 124 years.
We are well underway with production in 2014 now and the small changes to the distillery have certainly made life a little easier on the malt floor! A conveyor in the middle of the floor now takes the barley straight up and into the Kiln.. A very welcome improvement from previously using broom handles and a variety of other things to poke barley down a shoot at the end of the malt floor. A very happy production team now!
We have had a busy start to 2014 at the distillery with lots of new equipment being fitted. As well as the new Conisby warehouse, which now holds all our maturing casks, we have installed two new vatting tanks in the warehouse opposite the still house. The new vatting tanks will marry the Machir Bay, 100% Islay and other releases prior to bottling. We have also made improvements to the malt handling which will make moving the barley from the malt floor to the kiln quicker and easier, no more poking barley down a hole with a broom handle! A new corking machine and conveyors in the bottling hall have brought big smiles to the faces of the bottling team – bruised hands from pushing in 1000’s of corks a day will be a thing of the past! We look forward to showing off these improvements to visitors when we fully reopen on February the 6th.
Happy New Year from everyone at Kilchoman! It was a great 2013 with a few changes at the distillery. A new warehouse has been built, new heat exchanging equipment has been installed and it was also a record production year with a little over 130,000 litres of alcohol being produced.
We are hoping for another fantastic year in 2014 and here is what we have planned for you..
– Machir Bay 2014 (Spring)
– Loch Gorm (Spring)
– 100% Islay 4th Edition (Spring)
– Cask Strength Release (Autumn)
– Port Cask Matured (Autumn)
