Port Ellen, a brief history ...

Distillery Port Ellen was built in 1825, and for this purpose Alexander Ker M'Kay's malt mill was converted. The lessor of the land remained Walter Frederick Campbell of Shawfield and Islay, the same person who gave permission to build the distillery. In 1826, the distillery came into production and the first tenant was the aforementioned Alexander Ker M'Kay, who produced 31,313 litres of alcohol in the first year. Alexander remained licensee until 1827, after which Hugh M'Kay succeeded him. This Hugh M'Kay distilled there for two years, only 2,286 litres in 1828 and a whopping 74,978 litres in 1829. Hugh was succeeded by Thomas M'Kay but not for long either. In the excise year from 10 October 1829 to 10 October 1830, Thomas distilled 99,941 litres of alcohol. In it to 10 October 1831, John Morrison and Co. entered the excise list, producing 56,289 litres of alcohol that year. The following year it produced 97,618 litres and in 1833 a whopping 127,236 litres. John Morrison remained licence holder until 1836, when the licence went to John Ramsay. Ramsay would remain owner until his death in 1892, after which his wife Lucy Martin Ramsay took ownership of the distillery. When she too died in 1906, the estate passed to their eldest son Captain Iain Ramsay.

Iain sold his father's estate in small pieces in the 1920s. As early as 1919, Iain sold the Port Ellen distillery to the Port Ellen Distillery Company Ltd, in which blenders James Buchanan and John Dewars were shareholders. Poor economic conditions forced these blenders to merge with Distillers Company Limited (D.C.L.) in 1925. This company decided in 1930 to transfer all its malt whisky producing distilleries to sister company Scottish Malt Distillers Ltd. and to close Port Ellen distillery that same year. Only the whisky warehouses and floor maltings remained in operation.

Rebuilding distillery and new malting plant

Due to a strong revival in demand for Scotch whisky during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Scottish Malt Distillers decided to rebuild Port Ellen distillery after thirty-seven years.

Work began in 1966 and the new distillery went into production on 1 April 1967. As the floor maltings had remained in production all this time, it was logical that the malt used at the new distillery would come from there. The green malt here was dried with a hot peat fire and the phenols from this fire (meta-cresol and ortho-cresol) caused a medicinal aroma of iodine in the malt. The phenol guaiacol, which causes a smoky aroma, was much less present then. When the production capacity of Caol Ila distillery was expanded, it was first demolished (as mentioned earlier) because there was no room to build a new one next to it, as was the case with Clynelish. During the period when Caol Ila was not producing, Brora distillery took over production. The malt then came from the drum maltings built in 1968 at Muir of Ord, which by then was producing smoked malt. The expansion of Caol Ila meant that much more malt had to be produced on Islay. It was decided that a drum malting plant on the same model as the one at Muir of Ord would be built.

Floor maltings versus Drum maltings

In this type of drum maltings, the green malt is no longer dried with a peat fire but with oil stoves, which makes the green malt dry faster. In order to give the malt some peat character, a peat smoke ‘fire’ is lit under the floor with the drying green malt, not a peat fire with flames but a ‘smoke fire’. As soon as real fire comes in, a sprinkler extinguishes it with water until it starts smoking again. The smoke coming from this ‘peat smoke fire’ is blown through the drying bed of green malt with the help of a turbine along with the hot air from the oil stoves. This smoke contains mainly the phenol guaiacol, but virtually no meta-cresol or ortho-cresol. For this reason, the character of most Islay malt whiskies has changed, from slightly smoky and heavily medicinal (iodine) to a true smoke bomb. This change has been very slow because most of the phenols are in the lagoon due to their high boiling point. In second distillation, as they use it in Scotland, the distillation is divided into three parts; the preliminary run, the middle run and the afterrun. The preliminary run takes a very short time and is full of low boiling point flavour compounds, which already evaporate at a low temperature. The middle run, the part from which the final whisky is made, starts with the evaporation of the lighter flavour compounds followed by more heavier ones. The heavier ones, such as phenols, have the ability to dissolve in alcohol and thus hitch a ride, allowing them to be distilled anyway. Some of the phenols therefore end up in the middle run, but most in the after run. This is partly because when the middle run is finished, the temperature in the boiler goes up during the afterrun. We know that the before and after run is always reused in the next second distillation. This is done to avoid any short-term flavour difference, and in this case it has been proven to work.

When Port Ellen distillery received malt from the malting floor from 1967 to 1973, the amount of the phenols meta-cresol and ortho-cresol in the whisky was built up in the after-distillation. However, the supply of these phenols in the lagoon decreased sharply after the opening of the drum malt house in 1973. Thus, the phenols meta-cresol and ortho-cresol disappeared from the afterflow through the middle course and the phenol guaiacol multiplied there. This process happened very slowly and the flavour changed from medicinal-iodine to a smoky flavour after years. Consciously or unconsciously, Port Ellen made two types of whisky in its 16 years of existence, a medicinal and a smoking whisky. Again, the question is which of the two will produce the new Port Ellen. If it becomes the smoky one, the malt will simply come from the drum maltings, and it won't stand out too much from the island's other whiskies. If it becomes the medicinal with the iodine aroma, it will first need to build another floor malt house, where the green malt is actually dried with a peat fire.

And now its 2024 ...

Port Ellen returned to production in 2024, producing 750,000 litres a year.