SPRING IS HERE AND SO THE SOWING BEGINS

It is beginning to warm up here on Islay and the days are stretching, the flocks of barnacle and white fronted geese that arrived on the island in October for the winter, have now started their long journey back to Greenland for the summer. Their departure marks the start of Spring and with it, we begin the familiar timetable of ploughing the fields and sowing barley, fingers crossed that the weather will play its part and allow us to harvest a good yield of barley come late summer.

This year we have sown 96 acres of Concerto barley, with a small pocket of 10 acres dedicated to testing a new barley variety, for us, called Laureate. Concerto has for a long time been our go-to barley variety; it has served us well, coping with Islay’s notoriously changeable wind, weather conditions and salty climate to deliver very consistent results. Barley varieties are however continuously evolving and we have high hope for Laureate.

The barley we grow here at Kilchoman is used exclusively to distill our 100% Islay expression. For us, our 100% Islay philosophy is about replicating the grass root traditions of farm distilling both in Scotland but especially on Islay. From the very birth of Kilchoman, our 100% Islay range was our reason for being; it represented the revival of malt whisky produced on a single location from barley to bottle, where the responsibility for the quality and consistency at each stage was not outsourced but completed on site with skill, care and attention to detail. We are proud to be the only Islay distillery producing single malt whisky from barley grown and malted on Islay. You can almost follow the trail of grain from the fields to the malt floor.

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