Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with what certainly looks like several acres of warehousing space adjoining; how the hell
you'd cop for this lot while looking for a wee holiday home by the coast quite defeats
me. Whatever; Mr Armstrong signed the papers, then thought, actually, it would be in-
teresting to try his hand at distilling. Either he's a real sweet talker or United Distillers
were much nicer than Ravening Capitalist Mega Corps are supposed to be, because they
agreed to alter the terms of the no-distilling clause to let Bladnoch make up to 100,000
litres of spirit a year (it could make over ten times that at full production), and so Mr A,
after installing the necessary pipes and ancillary bits and pieces and attending to the legal
paperwork, had his working distillery.
Sitting just outside Wigtown in the midst of fields beside the lower tidal reaches of
the river Bladnoch, across from a pleasant little pub with colourfully impressive hanging
baskets, the distillery is attractive and welcoming. When I arrived they had a pair of six-
week old kittens called Sherry and Bourbon wandering around the courtyard and Visitor
Centre in that dazed, not entirely coordinated, what-am-I-doing-here-again? manner that
kittens tend to exhibit at that age.
Bladnoch is basically a one-person-operated distillery; with its necessarily sedate pro-
duction schedule, each stage of the process is carried out in discrete steps and only needs
one person to oversee everything. Many more people are required to staff the Centre and
manage the place than it needs to actually make the whisky. Perhaps because of this there
is a distinctly relaxed air about Bladnoch, a sort of gentle feel to the place. Also, the tour's
a very reasonable one pound each, so it's not as though they're running it more to rake
in dosh from the Visitor Centre while forgetting about the whisky itself. It feels like part
of the community, too; the old bottling hall has been turned into a fairly sizable function
space - something like a modern interpretation of a medieval banqueting hall - with a
stage, bar and lots of space for dancing and general hilarity. Popular with the locals for
weddings and birthday parties, apparently, and even on a sunny afternoon, deserted apart
from our small tour group, it feels like is does indeed have an atmosphere conducive to
serious fun.
Very lightly peated indeed (3 p.p.m.), Bladnoch is a light, flowery, crisp dram, very
appropriately Lowland in character. I've already got a Rare Malts Edition 23-year-old at
53.6 abv and it's quite a forceful, dynamic dram for something so intrinsically light in
character; a rapier to the cutlasses and broadswords of some of the heavier, more north-
erly whiskies. It'll be 2010 before the first of the new-ownership bottlings become avail-
able from Bladnoch, and it will be interesting to see to what extent the character of the
whisky changes then. It's an easy place to like and the people seem enthusiastic. You find
yourself wishing them all the best for the future, and looking forward to watching the de-
velopment of the distillery and the whisky.
