Ballygrant
The lost Islay distillery of Ballygrant was but a fleeting part of the island’s history.
These days 25% of its barley requirements come from Islay (mostly from fields around the distillery). It has a small malting floor and kiln which produces a medium-peated malt - the heavily peated with which it is mixed comes from Port Ellen. Inside the distillery, fermentation is long - helping to create fruitiness to balance the shoreline/shellfish like phenolics, while an enlightened (and pricey) wood policy has seen a high percent of first-fill ex-Bourbon and ex-Sherry casks being used. The result is that Kilchoman has hit the start of its mature period at a remarkably young age.
The location of Kilchoman on Islay’s west coast has some historical resonance. It was in this parish that the MacBeatha/Beaton family settled when they came across in 1300 from what is now Co. Antrim. They were doctors (a Beaton was the hereditary physician to the kings of Scotland for hundreds of years) who translated medical texts about distillation from Latin into Gaelic. There is therefore a theory (albeit unproven) that Islay was the first place where distillation took place in Scotland - and that Kilchoman parish was where it occurred.
It wasn’t so much this which caused Anthony Wills to build his farm distillery here in 2005 - it was more the fact that there was a spare steading at Rockside farm available. In building Kilchoman, the Wills family has brought farm distilling back to Islay.
Now surrounded by barley fields, the distillery expanded once (in 2007) and built new warehouses and in 2010 hired a hugely experienced manager in John MacLellan who had spent many years at the helm of Bunnahabhain. The history may be short, but the long-term vision is very much in evidence.
The lost Islay distillery of Ballygrant was but a fleeting part of the island’s history.
One of a swathe of lost Islay distilleries, Bridgend was briefly licensed in the early 19th century.