Bowmore

Bowmore is the oldest licensed distillery on Islay, standing on the shore of Loch Indaal. It is one of the few that still malts barley on its own floors — part of what it needs — dried over peat cut from the island's bogs and blended with mainland malt, which is why the spirit sits between the heaviest smoke of Islay's south coast and the lighter malts of its north.

Maturation happens in the No.1 Vaults, a warehouse dug below the level of the loch with one wall serving as the town's sea wall. Cold, damp and slow, it is where its most prized casks are kept, and the whiskies distilled in the 1950s and 60s — tropical fruit carried on peat smoke — are the most admired the distillery has made.

Black Bowmore is the release the name now rests on: 2,000 bottles drawn from 1964 casks, sold in 1993 for around a hundred pounds each. Four editions followed, ending in 2016 with a fifty-year-old Last Cask of 159 bottles. The same 1964 distillate gave the Black, White and Gold trilogy, one whisky shown three ways.