As of the 7th of January the whole team at Kilchoman were back to the distillery. Tony and Gavin have got us back into production and have been mashing in. The bottling hall has also cranked into action for 2013 which will hopefully see bottles of Kilchoman flying out to people around the world!
This weekend 10th/11th November, John MacLellan our distillery manager will be doing a Master Class at the Milano Whisky Festival! He will be including various Kilchoman expressions including our NEW 100% Islay and a single cask bottling which has been selected for this event and it will be available to buy.
We hope to see some of you there!
Kilchoman have been announced as one of the finalists for the BBC’s Food and Farming Awards. We are nominated in the Best Drinks Producer section of the awards. The judges were looking for inspirational brewers, wine makers, distillers and juice-makers, using carefully sourced ingredients and skill to produce an outstanding drink.
Here is a link to the BBC radio 4 show announcing the finalists:
The Society of Petroleum Engineers held a technical meeting in Inverness 17-19th September on “Well Collision Avoidance and Well Interceptions – Hits and Misses”. Leading specialists in the oil drilling industry came together for three days to discuss techniques and technologies for drilling oil and gas wells safely. They also exchanged information on the rarely needed, but very important methods for locating wells underground in the event of a blow-out or other problems.
John Thorogood, a director, is pictured with the winners of a competition where teams, using a computer simulator, had to drill a well 4km underground to intersect another well that was blowing out. The winners were: Ben Hawkinson (Scientific Drilling, California), Inge Mosti (Statoil, Bergen and a great fan of Islay malts), Mike Walker (Exxon, Houston), Barry Smart (Gyrodata, Aberdeen) and Shirish Deshpande (Schlumberger, St Johns’ Newfoundland). David Chen (Hess, Houston) had to leave before the photograph was taken.
John McLellan has been voted by the Whisky Magazine as Distillery Manager of the Year! John has won the award along with Eddie McAffer of Bowmore. This award is fully deserved for the hard work John has put in this year creating some of the finest spirit in Scotland. Congratulations John!
The Good Dram Show reviewed four of the latest releases from Kilchoman; Machir Bay, 2006 Vintage, Sherry Cask and Spring 2011.
We are pleased to announce the upcoming release of the 2nd Editon 100% Islay which will be released on the 1st of September.
This is the second 100% Islay release from Kilchoman and has been produced from barley grown, malted, distilled, matured and bottled at the distillery. It has been aged for over 3 years in a combination of fresh and refill bourbon barrels.
The International Wine and Spirits Competition was held recently and it was a successful day for Kilchoman! We entered three releases for the competition; Machir Bay, 2006 Vintage and the Sherry Cask release and all three received top awards.
Machir Bay – Gold Award
2006 Vintage – Gold Award
Sherry Release – Silver Outstanding
The Master of Malt team visited us along with around 20 others for a special tasting during Feis Ile. The tasting was taken by Anthony Wills and consisted of some special drams of the Feis Ile 2012, Sherry cask release, Sauternes single cask and a bourbon single cask. Master of Malt have written about their visit in the link below.
http://www.masterofmalt.com/Blog/post/Feis-Ile-2012-Day-5.aspx
The Scottish Field Whisky Challenge took place recently with 40 different whiskies being blind tasted by a panel of judges. Our 2006 Vintage release did fantastically well, placing 3rd in the £35 – £80 section and an impressive 7th overall!! Not bad for a 5 year old…
