Torabhaig Allt Gleann The Legacy Series

 Batch 2. This second batch shows a bit more aged quality with an aroma set of peat, d'anjou pear, light grain notes, and a pleasant charcutier note. The palate shows a softer and more balanced flavor set of sweet peat, dried pear, and a finish of sea spray. 46% ABV D&M Tasting Notes

The groundwork for Torabhaig was laid by a Baron: Sir Iain Noble. After starting the UK’s first merchant bank in the 1960s he bought and retired to a large 20,000 acre estate on Skye’s southern flank. Here he dabbled in Gaelic language promotion and dreamed of opening a distillery. Importantly for our purposes he sought and after an extended period received planning approval for turning a 19th century farm at Torabhaig into a distillery. It turns out that the good Baron was more a dreamer than a do-er; even with approval for the distillery coming though in 2002, upon his death in 2010 the distillery was not yet realized. Thankfully for whisky lovers everywhere, there was another ambitious company that had an eye to opening a distillery on the Isle of Skye. Mossburn (which we introduced you to back in 2018) was an outgrowth Neil Mathieson, a spirits importer with 35+ years under his belt, and Marussia Beverages, a multinational Dutch producer looking to get into the Scotch Whisky game. Together they had the drive and financing to bring Noble’s vision to life. First though was the matter of the farm. By the time Mossburn came along, the farm was little more than a set of rubble with protected status. Over the course of three years they went about transforming it back into a standing structure and furthermore a working distillery

In this somewhat meandering conversation with Torabhaig's Bruce Perry, he talks about the challenges of working within their space constraints. With the low ceiling of the existing buildings, the still could not be as long necked and tall as most modern distillery setups. To give access to the stills for maintenance, they ended up with a retractable slate roof. The length of time to get the buildings in place did give the advantage for the distilling team to ask what type of spirit they did in fact, want to produce. After many banter back and forth, they settled on a high in-grain phenolics (peat) that is balanced with both long fermentations & slow distillation. In these writeups we do not often mention that most important first step of whisky making: fermentation. At Torabhaig it happens slowly over 90 hours in Douglas Fir washbacks before being transferred to the 6,000 liter bulb shaped stills fired by steam. Currently 100% of distilled spirits are to be released as a single malt. The distillate is aged both on site and at Mossburn’s other facilities in the Lowlands.

So that is how to make whisky sorted, but now to the matter of who to make the whisky? The Mossburn company was keen and focused on drawing from the local population of Skye for their team; they were not looking to parachute whisky professionals into Torabhaig. Skye is undeniably beautiful, but does not have much industry to provide jobs. As a result, their initial team of distillers started at the distillery with no previous production experience. (They specifically wanted to hire locals and provide them with year round jobs.) Thankfully they were quick studies, and the future of the second distillery on Skye appears bright. Michael Kennel, D&M