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"NO ONE WHO TAKES ON ANYTHING BIG AND TOUGH CAN AFFORD TO BE MODEST."– Orson Welles
Islay is a remote island surrounded by fast currents, dangerous skerries, powerful overfalls, wild winds and Atlantic swell. This unforgiving combination of nature, has been a barrier protecting those within, and keeping away those from outside for millennia. Around these shores there are countless shipwrecks and thousands of lost souls.
It is an island in isolation, one that has retained its Gael/ Viking gene pool. Politically and strategically important, Islay was home of the once mighty Lordship of the Isles, a pan-Gaelic independent kingdom-within-a-kingdom that dominated the western seaboard of North Britain.
The Ìlich are thus a free-spirited people; they have had to be. Independent of mind, proud of spirit. This isolation, together with the relative fertility of the land, made Islay an ideal place to distil.
The enterprising Harvey brothers chose Islay to build their new state-of-the-art distillery in the summer of 1881. After a filial bust-up, William Harvey took control. From the outset Bruichladdich was on its own. An outsider. It was a roller-coaster existence, and following his death in 1935, the distillery was finally sold, entering the corporate whisky world.
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It is an island in isolation, one that has retained its Gael/Viking gene pool