A full 124 years had gone by since the last distillery opened on the island of Islay, but in 2005 Anthony Wills made his mark on the island's history by founding Kilchoman.
Set on the western side of the island near Rockside Farm and not far from Loch Gorm, Anthony Wills wanted to create his own craft venture modelled on the traditional farm distilleries: Kilchoman is in fact one of the few distilleries in Scotland that sets out to carry out every stage of the whisky-making process in-house. The barley is grown at Rockside Farm and malted using the distillery's own malting floor (Kilchoman is one of the last seven distilleries still using an in-house malting floor); distillation, maturation and bottling, of course, also take place within the distillery.
At present the distillery uses its in-house malting floor for 20% of its requirements; the malt produced on site has a peating level of 20 ppm, while the rest is bought in from the Port Ellen maltings at 50 ppm. The distillery is equipped with one (semi-lauter) mash tun, 6 stainless steel washbacks with an average fermentation time of around 90 hours, and two stills.
Did you know? Annual output is just 200,000 litres (one of the smallest in Scotland) and all the whisky produced is destined for bottling as single malt. Maturation takes place 80% in ex-bourbon casks, sourced from Buffalo Trace, and the remaining 20% in ex-Oloroso Sherry casks. In September 2009 Kilchoman released its first 3 year old single malt and finally, in June 2011, the first single malt with barley grown, malted, distilled, matured and bottled at the distillery: "Kilchoman 100% Islay".
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