WhiskyStories: Port Ellen - The Legend Is Reborn

A sleeping giant who recently reopened after being silent for four decades. The iconic Port Ellen has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. Millions of pounds has been pumped into this spectacular project of bringing back the Port Ellen heritage. And you and I are going to see it now before it will be open to public. Embark on a spirited journey through time and tradition where golden barley transform into liquid gold. From the verdant fields to the mastery within aged oak casks, we explore the soulful alchemy of distillation across iconic distilleries. Join us as we unravel the tales and taste of a legacy meticulously crafted drop by precious drop. This is Whiskey Stories. Emily, sitting here at Port Ellen, please tell us something about the fall and rise of this iconic distillery. Port Ellen was actually established in 1825. Like a lot of the older distilleries on Islay, it started off as a mill. We have a stream that still today runs through our site. John Ramsey is one of the key figures for Port Ellen, but also for the island and for whisky. He was a great thinker, not just in whisky, but in building infrastructure on the island. When John Ramsey was becoming a distillery manager, ageing whisky wasn't really the done thing. Part of that was because of the heavy tax. The longer you keep it, the more you have the angel share. So being able to change the legislation, to not pay tax until you bottle it, to have what we now call bonded warehouses, keeping the whisky in bond, was the first stepping stones to allow whisky to be matured longer. So one of the big pushes for Port Ellen Distillery is all about innovation, being sustainable. So here we've got our four CIP tanks. So CIP is basically a cleaning process, cleaning in place or cleaning in progress. We want to do something totally different in terms of Scotch distilleries, so we've put in this custom-built six-roller mill. It's awesome, both in terms of sustainability, but also in terms of getting a lot of innovation, getting a lot of flavours. Exactly, and that's what we're really trying to do. Every piece of equipment that we go through in site, it's all about what can we do different. We don't want to live in the name Port Ellen, we want to make the name Port Ellen. We want to be forward-thinking on our own. Exactly. We have got six wooden washbacks, they're all Oregon pine. They've got a maximum fill volume, so brim full capacity of just over 52,000 litres. And this is really, for me personally, where Port Ellen becomes Port Ellen. We start thinking about flavour. And one of the taste notes we always talk about with a good traditional Port Ellen is that fruitiness. This is where we're going to start producing that fruitiness on site. And Port Ellen certainly has its place in history. But what happened in the 80s? When John Ramsey was the manager, it was part of a boom, it was part of industrial revolution, it was part of really redefining the drink. But there was a bust actually in the 1900s, the distillery closed in 1930. And then it reopened again in 1967. So at the time that Port Ellen closed in 1983, the last time it closed, it was part of a time what we call the Whiskey Loch. And it was not just a sad day for Port Ellen, but for the island. They just felt like this is it. Everything is closing down. Whiskey bubble has popped. A lot of people lost their jobs, had to move away. Port Ellen really is in the heart of the community. The distillery is, the warehouses welcome you in as you come in on the boat. So it's quite an iconic part of the community. And for that to close was really quite devastating and symbolic. When you look back historically, when Port Ellen closed in 1983, there was a big downturn across the industry. A lot of distilleries closed at that time. But there were a few distilleries that people really thought very, very dearly of and adored. Over the years, the awareness and the love for Port Ellen just grew and grew and grew. And it got to the point that we should bring this back. We made an announcement a few years ago, back in 2017, I think it was, that we were going to be investing in expanding our distillery visitor centers, but also bringing back Port Ellen and Brora. You have created replicas of the original equipment, right? Yes, the original stills were actually taken apart and rumor has it went to India. So there was really nothing, nothing left. But thankfully we have the archives. So the stills we have now are exact replicas of them because we know the size and shapes of stills are so important for the flavor. Here they are. Beautiful, I know. There is something really romantic about them. So as we've been going through, right, we've been talking about Phoenix and Experimental. So this is us now on the Phoenix side. So these stills are based on the last set of original stills. The stills that ran between 1967 and 1983. But for us, the gold star, the real tick of making sure we got it right, was the opening event. We had the ex-distillery workers, most of whom all still live on the island, Ian McArthur, his brother. They came and they stood in front of those stills and we said, have we got it right? And they said, yeah, it's like going back in time. You are doing a lot of experimental stuff here as well. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, we really wanted to strike that balance of huge respect for what came before, but also accepting and understanding that part of what made Port Ellen great was the fact that it always had that innovative experimental nature at its heart. So we wanted to maintain that when we rebuilt the distillery would look moving forward. So yes, you know, we're based on tradition in terms of how we make the whiskey. The stills in the still house are to the same size and shape and dimensions as they were back in the day. But we've also been very, very forward thinking in many, many different ways as to how we've pulled this all together and what it's going to do moving forward as well. And then on to my second favourite piece of equipment. So I've already said the mill's my favourite thing, right? So I can't say everything is, but this is probably my second favourite. So this is the 10 part experimental spirit safe. For us, myself and my production team, we need to really elevate the name of Port Ellen to your point, but also be forward thinking, really push Port Ellen the ways we want to do as well. We want to salute back to the past and we want to celebrate that legend has it that Port Ellen had the first ever spirit safe in the world. But what we're also trying to do is celebrate the complexity of Port Ellen distillery. So see, if you look at the back of the safe, we've got 10 different control valves and then underneath the safe, we've got these 10 different pipe routes as well. So do you remember on the other side, we talked about those three cuts, four shots, spirit, faint. So four shots, very high in alcohol, your spirit's your heart at the run and your faint is the end of your run. That's the way it's done all over the world. But at Port Ellen, we ask the question, well, why did it need to be like that? What I've done for the very first spirit run on site, I got the operators to take a spirit cut every half an hour and within that one spirit cut, there is hundreds, if not thousands of different flavour profiles and that's what we really want to do in here. So from any one of these safes, we can go to any one of the 10 receivers downstairs and that's really when we can explore more about Port Ellen. The thing about Port Ellen is, it's not just us telling you what we think Port Ellen is. We want to know from you, what do you want Port Ellen to be? And this is what this safe allows us to do. As boring as it sounds, a lot of distilleries have got the ambition to be forward thinking and to push innovation. But what you need to have is you need to have the valve arrangement and the tank arrangement downstairs. And this is really when Port Ellen becomes its own. Around the millennium, something happened. We saw a new release of Port Ellen. Can you put some words? Yeah, so... And what happened from there? So most of the Port Ellen casks that were on site, which weren't many, sat there for a while. People didn't necessarily have the foresight to think, oh, we will age this 20 years. It wasn't a business plan. It was this beautiful, happy accident. We have now benefited from the fact that Port Ellen was filled quite high. Whiskey wasn't being cut down to the 63% that we have now because of the wood shortage. But that has meant it's had this beautifully gentle, careful maturation. And so the liquid that is now 2030, our new release is 44 years old, still has so much vibrancy. Now, I'll tell you a little bit about this. So Port Ellen Gemini, it's a 44-year-old single malt Scotch whisky. It's a first for us in many senses of the word. It's the first time we've released a whisky of such a great age. 44 years old is the oldest expression of Port Ellen we have ever released. It is the first whisky we've launched since reopening and rebuilding our distillery. And it's the first time we have ever released a twin whisky from Port Ellen. So when it was that first initial release, it made people really stand up and go, whoa, what is this Islay spirit? It is still characteristically Islay. We still have that smokiness, that medium smoke with the salty saline flavours. But what really always stands out in Port Ellen is the fruitiness. And that's what's really attracted this core fan base because it is certainly a very different taste for Islay. It stands out amongst the other giants here. On a final note, Emily, if you met someone who had never heard about Port Ellen before, what do you want them to know? I want them to know that even though it's a small distillery on a small island, its legacy is worldwide. Its history is so important to whisky as we know it. And what we're creating here is carrying on that legacy and its history in the making and is going to create a liquid that is as special as the liquid we've inherited from the people who were here in the past.