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So far so very good…2013 growing season

IN Barley 5th August 2013/by Carl Reavey
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So far so very good.  It is always extremely difficult, indeed dangerous, to make predictions about Islay’s notorious growing season, but we have had an excellent summer so far during 2013.  Things have not gone to plan of  course, they rarely do, but the end result is looking decidedly promising so far as our all-important barley crop is concerned.    We can never relax until the grain is harvested and safely in the shed, but the prospects for Islay Barley 2013 are just fine right now.

We started the annual growing season back at the beginning of April with an uncharacteristic cool but dry spell and some farmers growing for Bruichladdich took the risk of sowing early, hoping that the remaining flocks of hungry wild geese would not do too much damage, and that a late frost would not nip the germinating grain.

That worked out quite well, but those farmers who had decided to play it safe and delay sowing until the end of April or beginning of May were suddenly faced with a prolonged spell of cold wet weather that prevented them getting onto the fields with their tractors.  Some did not get the seed in until the very end of May.  Loo late really.  We feared the worst.

The worst did not happen.  The cold wet spring turned into a long warm summer bathed in lots of sunshine, with a few showers every now and then to keep things moving.  It has been a great growing season, and the barley is now starting to turn golden as it ripens.   Even the late sown crops have all but caught up.

There is optimistic talk of harvesting in August.  That would be amazing.  Much could still go wrong, but we Laddies are optimistic by nature.  It is going to be fine…

 

Our picture shows the photographer William Cooper-Mitchell in a field of ripening malting barley at Gartbreck on the banks of Loch Indaal.  The village of Port Charlotte can be seen in the distance.

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WMD – THE STORY OF THE YELLOW SUBMARINE HAS BEEN FULL OF CHARACTER AND CHARACTERS RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

It started with our friend ‘Demolition Dave’ helping Duncan McGillivray and his gang to demolish the old Inverleven distillery – buying up all the old equipment for scrap and loading it onto barges on the Clyde. All so Duncan had some spares to keep Bruichladdich running in the days of No Money.

As this odd flotilla was being towed round the Mull of Kintyre and up to Islay, Laddie MD Mark Reynier received an email from the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in the USA who had been monitoring distillery webcams on the grounds that our processes could have been ‘tweaked’ to produce the dreaded WMD. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.

Never one to allow the opportunity for a good story to pass him by, or to get his beloved distillery in the news, Reynier embellished the tale, which soon grew to involve spies and the CIA and visits by weapons inspectors. All of which made great headline-grabbing copy in the febrile media atmosphere then prevailing around WMD.

One of the stills from Inverleven was dutifully set up outside the old Victorian buildings, and became an iconic sight, with a pair of Duncan’s old wellie boots sticking out of the top to represent those weapons inspectors searching for dangerous chemicals deep in its copper bottomed interior.

A special bottling was commissioned (of course) and dubbed the ‘Whisky of Mass Distinction’ (geddit?) and much hilarity ensued. At least among the Laddies, the rest of the whisky industry having long since given up on the noisily irreverent rebels.

WMDII: A YELLOW SUBMARINE

Things were about to get even more eccentric because, shortly afterwards, Islay fisherman John Baker was heading home to Port Ellen when he spotted something awash in the sea off the bow of his boat. Being a resourceful man, he attached a rope to said object and towed it into the pier where Gordon Currie lifted it out of the water. It proved to be a very beautiful yellow submarine.

Very conveniently, the yellow vessel had ‘Ministry of Defence’ and a telephone number stencilled on it, which was of course immediately called. What happened next was to become the stuff of legend. He was connected to the Royal Navy. “I have found your yellow submarine” said John. “We haven’t lost a yellow submarine” said the Navy. Which was an odd response as the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming.

John and Gordon then loaded the submarine onto a lorry and took it to a secret location in Port Ellen (actually fellow fisherman Harold Hastie’s back garden). The local newspaper was called, then the nationals, and the following day the red-tops were full of pictures of the two friends astride the lethal-looking machine, carrying fishing rods, and asking: “Has anybody lost a yellow submarine?”

Hilarious… unless you were the Royal Navy – who did eventually admit to it being theirs. HMS Blyth, the minesweeper that lost it, eventually came to pick it up, slipping into the pier at dawn to winch it aboard. By that time, Bruichladdich had (of course) commissioned another bottling, WMD2: The Yellow Submarine, and a box of lovely liquid was graciously offered, and accepted by the captain as a goodwill gesture.

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