Travelling To Scotland's Wild West
Hello from Glencoe! This is probably one of Scotland's most popular and well-known tourist spots But rightly so It is very beautiful But what comes with that are A lot of people, a lot of buses, and a lot of traffic If you've seen my videos before, you'll know that I tend to stay away from these touristy spots in Scotland I like to go to places that are a bit quieter, they're a bit less discovered And that's exactly what I'm planning to do today I'm going to be going on a trip for the next few days To explore the most westerly part of mainland Scotland It's quite a wild and remote area I think it's going to be quite different to the scenes here at Glencoe So I'm really excited Let's get going! I made my way from Glencoe to Corran to catch the Corran ferry One of the shortest ferry crossings I've come across in Scotland I've always been interested to go on this ferry, but I've never been heading over to this area So that's why I've never taken it before But just over there, I can see the crossing And it is so short You could swim it pretty much Using this ferry saves over an hour of driving via Fort William And you don't need to book it It operates every 20 to 30 minutes, seven days a week And is an essential service for connectivity in the Scottish Highlands I'd like to quickly mention about my Patreon page Over on Patreon, I'm sharing uncut and longer versions of some of my YouTube videos And there's a 1 hour 20 minute version of this video available to watch over on Patreon Car plus occupants £10 I wonder if it's more for a van Bicycles and pedestrians free There's someone coming round and taking payments from the window of the car Every ferry is so different Because sometimes you go into the office Sometimes you pay in advance Other times they come and take the payment from your window That'll be a tenner, please Okay, thank you so much You take care now Thanks, see you Okay, so £10 That was so fast We're already here It felt like about three minutes I'm not sure what the exact length of the ferry is I will find out and just share it in the video Unfortunately, it was a very quick exit and I couldn't get the footage This is the ferry that I just got off They started unloading the ferry really quickly and my lane we're off first There's a little ramp And then you can turn left And that goes towards the place we're going Or you can go right And I'm going to take a quick detour to the right Because there's somewhere I want to visit My first stop after getting off the Corran ferry Was Ardgowr Ales A brewery located around a two-minute drive from the ferry terminal They are known for producing a variety of high-quality and award-winning beers Their equipment runs on the hydroelectricity produced locally And the names of the beers are in Scottish Gaelic The owner, Fergus, introduced his selection of beers So at Ardgowr Ales, we've got ten beers altogether They're not all available today This one's called Eas Geal Which means white waterfall in Gaelic Very light easy drinking citrusy beer Boc Beag, the little buck A real goat who was born alone in the village here that posed for our label The summer ale Single hop, fuggle This one is a milk stout Bainne nan Gobhar So we've got a little goat drinking from the bottle on that one Dark, nutty, satisfying This is our IPA, Boc Bàn, the pale buck This one, Gobhar Odhar, means the dun-colored goat This is my favorite It's a sort of North of England style best bitter This is our special lager for the summer of sport So our goats gone on holiday to Paris to win a gold medal Bonn Oir means gold medal in Gaelic And this is our specialty product Fìon an Eòrna, wine of the barley It's old-fashioned barley wine Lovely to sip after dinner Come to Ardgour and buy them all Thank you You serve food here as well? We do, Yeah Friday nights, we do pizzas by pre-order We also serve homemade pizza on a Sunday afternoon that's just arrived and hope for the best Or burgers at other times And we're shut on a Monday I love visiting breweries and distilleries as I travel Scotland So I picked up this one, the Boc Beag Can't remember how Fergus in the brewery pronounced it But this looks great Now I'm going to head towards the Ardnamurchan The area I'm heading to today is called the Ardnamurchan Peninsula It's a remote and scenic area in the Scottish Highlands Known for its rugged landscape wildlife and beautiful coastal views As I drove from Coran towards the Ardnamurchan, I could already start to feel the remoteness I stopped at the Salen Jetty shop which had great reviews online I paid a visit to the village shop here and got a few items So I got the best food in Scotland Potato scone I also got some eggs And then I asked the man in the shop what's made locally And he recommended this shortbread That looks really good And also there were a selection of jams I went for the rhubarb jam The raspberry jam also looked really delicious I saw that they also sold Smidge in there Now it's the midge season in Scotland and I've run out of Smidge so I got one more I've so far taken the ferry and then I've made it here to the point called Salen and from this point, the road down the Ardnamurchan Peninsula starts Compared to this morning as I was driving through Glencoe The amount of traffic, the amount of people, the amount of buses Is much, much less over here I don't even think I've seen a single tour bus, which is really nice And it's exactly what I was looking for Now that I've stocked up on a few supplies Let's continue on the road down the Ardnamurchan Peninsula As I've been driving along I've noticed so much woodland It's really beautiful and quite unusual In a lot of other places I've traveled in Scotland, there's no trees And... this is quite different This looks like the distillery The Ardnamurchan Distillery Wow, fantastic I'll be coming back to go to that Most of this road is single track And I actually really enjoy driving on single-track roads Because you can go at a pace that you feel comfortable at And this camper van doesn't drive very fast I think the optimum speed is around 50 miles per hour I'm not driving 50 miles per hour on these roads But when I'm on a regular road I feel that if I drive at 50, it ends up there's a lot of traffic behind People are overtaking and I feel pressurized to drive faster However, on the single track roads, I'm driving now at 25 miles per hour Which sounds very slow As soon as a car comes, I go into a passing place and let them pass So I can drive at a pace that I really enjoy I can have a little look at the view I can go at a pace that I don't feel pressurized to drive too quickly at Really enjoying this drive so far I've seen a few places to stop, a few picnic areas, but not many I actually want to get out and have a look at the view But there hasn't been that many places that you can stop so far I continued my drive down the winding single track road And made a stop at a viewpoint The Ardnamurchan Peninsula is home to an ancient volcanic complex that formed over 55 million years ago This volcanic activity created the distinctive landscape seen today Ben Hiant, the highest peak on the peninsula, standing at 528 meters, is part of this volcanic system So I'm just parked up at this lovely viewpoint And the scenery is really lovely from this point onwards I'm going to have a little bit of coffee that I've got left over from this morning And I'm going to try a piece of the shortbread The homemade Highland shortbread I wonder if there's a difference between normal shortbread and Highland shortbread I don't think there is, although there's corn flour in this one Is that a normal ingredient for shortbread? I'm not sure Anyway, let's see how it tastes It's so crumbly I think it's going to drop all over the sofa Anyway, let's give it a try So crumbly So buttery Really good So behind me is Ben Hiant And over there, I was reading the plaque, that's the Isle of Mull I didn't realize how close it was Obviously, I've seen the map before But you can see it really clearly You can make out the electricity poles This viewpoint is a great place to stop You can see this beautiful beach I don't know if there's any access You might have to walk down the path In the distance over there, I can see the remains of some houses or perhaps a settlement And on the plaque in the car park I think it mentioned that that was possibly a village that was cleared during the Highland clearances These people were cleared and evicted from their homes to make way usually for sheep farming From this point on, It looks like there's a fantastic road heading into the hills there I'm looking forward to driving on it It looks quite exhilarating and quite narrow So let's get going It is raining a little bit now But sometimes I feel when it's raining, it makes it so atmospheric The previous video that I posted about driving down the longest dead-end road And there were a few people commenting that they'd like to do it on a motorbike And I think this would be a really good road to do on a motorbike [kiltʃowan]? [kilhowan]? Maybe [kilhowan] I might be butchering the pronunciation So I believe this is the biggest settlement here And from here, the ferry goes over to the Isle of Mull And tonight, I'm planning to stay at a campsite here And then tomorrow, I'm going to explore more of the peninsula And that looks like the pier for the ferry down there Kilchoan is a quaint village located on the southern shore of the Ardnamurchan peninsula It has a population of around 150 residents It provides essential amenities such as a primary school, post office, and general store It's the most westerly Village on Mainland Scotland Okay, I can see some camper vans I think have arrived at the campsite I do think there was one back there as well But it doesn't have showers And I like to go to campsites that have showers I think this is it Entrance up here I wonder if there is space Okay, reversing into this camping spot here Okay Oh my gosh That was a bit hairy We're in He said to stay on the upper one You can do anything if you try Make sure the handbrake is on I had a really great night of sleep here at the Ardnamurchan campsite The campsite was full last night And it cost me £12 to stay here overnight without electric hookup To find this wonderful campsite, I used an app called Campy And I know some of you watching already use this app Because I've seen you mention it in the comments before If you haven't heard of Campy before, it's a really great app That can help you find the best paid camping spots all over Europe All the locations, photos, and reviews on the app are added by other app users There's lots of information available about each campsite For example How much is it per night Is it pet-friendly Do they have showers And what other amenities that the campsite offers A feature on the app that I really like is called My Trips And you can save the campsites that you plan on going to And then within My Trips, it'll create a route or a map for you So you can visualize what your trip will be like I find this app really useful for finding places to stay overnight I tend to stay at paid campsites around 50% of the time And Campy is a great resource for finding places to stay I think you'll really enjoy it too And you can download it for free now By clicking the link in the video description below Thank you to Campy for making it possible to film this video today Now let's explore more of the Ardnamurchan I'm now going to be heading even further west And on the western side of the peninsula, there are a few more sights to see I've heard that the road from this point onwards Becomes quite windy and quite hairy But to be honest, I quite enjoy driving on roads like these Let's get going I've pulled up here at a place called the community garden shop And it looks like an honesty shop Let's go in and see what they have Oh There's some lettuce Some herbs That seems to be all there is I wonder if there's anything in here No These are usually strawberries Seems like there's nothing available today or perhaps it's sold out I continued my drive along the long single track road And spotted the top of the lighthouse in the distance At the lighthouse, there is a great community-owned cafe And I enjoyed some lunch I'm now waiting for my tour of the lighthouse The tour costs £9 And there seems to be a tour running every 30 minutes This lighthouse is said to be based on the Egyptian style of lighthouses Which is quite unique And I think it's the only one of its kind in Scotland The lighthouses in Scotland are quite iconic They're usually white and yellow But this one looks quite different Looking forward to seeing inside We're going to have a look at the views here before the tour starts The Ardnamurchan lighthouse, completed in 1849 And designed by Alan Stevenson Stands 36 meters tall And is a key navigational beacon on Scotland's western coast Originally operated by lighthouse keepers, it was automated in 1988 The lighthouse is owned and maintained by the local community through the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse Trust I'm now out here on the balcony of the lighthouse And just behind me is the Isle of Muck where I recently spent a week And then behind the Isle of Muck is the Isle of Eigg When I was on Muck, I could see the Ardnamurchan Peninsula when I was doing hikes So it's funny to now be on the other side So the man here at the lighthouse says that you can usually see Rum And then also the Outer Hebrides And the Isle of Skye on a clear day So, in the distance, there is the most westerly point So I'm going to head over there next I really enjoyed the tour It was really good, really worthwhile doing I learned a lot about how the lighthouse was operated here What the life was like for families at the time Now I'm in the engine room And the engines in here I think he mentioned they were used to power the foghorn back when it was in operation There's a really strong smell here of fuel Not sure if it's fuel or what it is Everything in here looks so old I'm leaving the lighthouse behind me in the distance here And I'm now setting off on foot To the westernmost point of Scotland It's also the westernmost point of mainland Britain I know some of you from Scotland are going to be commenting straight away "Ruth, you're Scottish, don't call it mainland Britain" Well, last time I checked, Scotland was still part of Britain I'm just stating the facts So, it's over there The lady in the cafe told me it takes around 30 to 40 minutes to walk And there is a faint path She told me where to start from Going to head down to this lay-by And the path starts from there I've got to the point here That is the lay-by And it looks like there is a faint path So I'm going to head down there The lady in the shop also told me that there's two burns that you need to cross It looks like one of them is just here The path is pretty rubbish, to be honest It's very boggy And it's starting to become quite difficult to follow I keep losing the path So I think only do this hike if you have proper shoes Because if I didn't have my hiking boots, definitely my trainers would be soaked This is the path here ahead It's very faint But you can make out the path But you need to pay attention to make sure you don't go off track I can see a little cairn in the distance That might be the westernmost point And there's this lovely little beach Just behind me In the distance there are a few sailboats I've seen quite a few sailboats today It's a wonderful day to be out sailing on the west coast of Scotland I think I've made it now to the cairn, to the westernmost point of Scotland Woohoo! Yes! This is the westernmost point of mainland Scotland While I was sitting admiring the views, I thought to myself that the Ardnamurchan feels like an island rather than a peninsula The meaning of Ardnamurchan in Gaelic is 'the height of the seals' Even though this is the westernmost point of mainland Scotland The actual westernmost point of Scotland is an incredibly interesting place It's a very small rock called Rockall And I think it takes around 17 or 18 hours to travel to this rock from the Outer Hebrides So it's a really long journey to get there Somewhere out there in the distance Now I'm heading to a place called Sanaa Beach And this beach looks unreal Now the weather has come out I think it's going to be absolutely stunning I've now arrived here at Sanaa Beach Which is said to be the most beautiful beach here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula The drive here was really incredible Along the single track roads, there were lovely views of the hills on each side And I've got my swimming things ready The weather is looking good I think there's a 50-50 chance that I'll actually go in Let's see To walk down to Sanaa Bay I need to go through these sand dunes There is a path, but it's quite a little walk from the car park actually Maybe 5-10 minutes The car park is not directly at the beach Wow, the beach has just come into view in front of me This is incredible Absolutely, incredible I'm set up here with my lovely towel This is unreal This beach is heaven The sun is out The water is blue The wind is blowing This beach is definitely up there with one of the most beautiful beaches that I've seen in Scotland A lot of people say that Outer Hebrides has the most amazing beaches But I haven't been there yet But this is absolutely beautiful I'm not going to go in swimming There might be a chance later on to go in swimming elsewhere So I'm going to hold off and wait until then I'm next going to catch up with some friends who live here on the Ardhamirkin Actually, I'm calling them my friends, but we've never met in real life before They're my online friends And this will be the first time we're meeting in real life They live here on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula And I'm really interested to find out what it's like living in such a remote and wild place They live in a camper van that they've converted themselves And I'm going to go to the spot that they're parked up at And also stay the night there with them Hi guys! Nice to meet you I'm Ruth Hello! Nice to meet you Feel like we should go up and give you a hug Lovely to meet you, Calum Lovely to meet you, Roksana You've picked a good day for it Yes, the weather's amazing And I'm so excited to hear about what it's like living here on the Aardamirchan Peninsula The reason I found out that Roksana and Calum are living here is because I watched their YouTube channel It's one of my favorite YouTube channels And it's called Ardview Vanlife Creative name You make really incredible videos about your life here on the Ardmurchan Peninsula I think we just try to show a real van life experience Van lifers don't necessarily travel all the time We use our van so we can live here We do a bit of travelling, but on the whole, it's just about living in this What we think is an incredible place I think we got this van five years ago in 2019 And then during the first lockdown, we renovated it And then we ended up moving to Islay So we lived there in a van for a year and a half And we went travelling for six months And then we came over here So, we've been here in the Ardnamurchan now for... Over a year And yeah, it feels like a nice new home And I think we settled quite well We both work locally And it's just a really nice community It seems a lovely place to live Chill And you work in the whisky industry? Yeah So I work in marketing for the local distillery Ardnamurchan distillery Which is nice because this is kind of a independent distillery So pretty chill You know you can put your mark on things pretty easily And most importantly Stuff is quite good Yeah it is very good We already had a little sip We might be a little biased But it's very good stuff Cheers guys, oh we forgot to say cheers Lovely to meet you So nice to meet you Finally We feel like we know you already I know we've tried to meet up a few times But it just never worked out You guys were down in Dumfries and Galloway And then I was up here in the area This is like the third time we've tried to meet up What's it like living in such a remote place like this? Rocks, you're up Yeah I definitely think that there's some challenges And I think where the peninsula is located, you actually feel like you're living on an island Because we are right at the back of the peninsula So the closest place, for example, to do grocery shopping for us is Fort William which is two two-hour drive Or the closest place would be Tobermory so we would take a wee ferry over to Mull Which is half an hour long So you go to an island You go from the mainland to an island to do your grocery shopping Exactly It's just a week off But yeah that's the job Everyone kind of knows each other as well so you feel a lot more safe And I think You know we've been in situations where the van broke down or something happened And we knew that we could rely on people that we've known only... Maybe for a few months It could be a few hours if the van is rolled into a fence Like I did one time And people are always quite quick to laugh at you But they'll help you It's really good Our only neighbors are deer, sheep, cows And then we have often white-tailed sea eagles flying over One time we've seen dolphins literally just swimming in the water from the van So just surrounded by wildlife It's pretty nice I'm still waiting for orcas I need to see a whale, maybe one day Yeah, that would be amazing How do you like it? Yeah, it's lovely First impressions, eh? It's not what I expected I think because it was on the mainland, I thought there'd be the shops And more people living here But actually, it really does feel like an island, like you described So you've got your van, But you've also got a car Yes That's a good idea Just makes it a lot easier to get to work, do the shopping, blah, blah, blah So yeah, we have the wee car And then the van is usually permanently... kind of semi-permanently parked
But we do like to take the van as well Quite often just to mix things up The good thing about having the van parked here all the time We have like an awning on the side I can show you Come round This is our conservatory Yeah conservatory, not awning Fantastic Obviously, we both live here And we have lived in the van full-time for like two years And people are always like "How the hell can you live in a van with two people for two years?" But part of the reason is space Okay, it's a small space inside But we have outside and we have our conservatory We also, anytime we have any friends staying over They can stay in like an extended tent Let's show you the inside Because the inside is the best Let me turn on the light Wow, already love the colour scheme Welcome to our home Please don't record the dishes that haven't been done We tidied just for you Wow, it's so cozy This is our house It's pretty... Unique, I think Yeah, so we did everything ourselves We bought it in June 2019 And then we spent the next year converting it ourselves So pretty much most of the things are made from scratch And a lot of the things we used are upcycled as well with the whiskey barrels And it just feels like home It's really nice The one thing that's pretty unusual about a van is we have our... Log burner Which some people think is a bit bonkers That's such a good idea for Scotland especially, and in the winter Because we spend all winter in here We've been in here with like two feet of snow outside And had it in the... I think minus fourteen was the coldest we've been in the van Is that in Scotland? Yeah that was up near Dingwall You've got a whisky cabinet there in the back there, isn't it? We prioritise space We do have a whisky cabinet with Obviously some Ardmore And the bed is up there as well For folk who maybe watch Ruth's channel who do van life There's maybe a good chance you've not seen a bed set up like this We haven't seen it in another van before Came out of my head But we just simply pull a double mattress down This slides out And then we have some ladders And, you know, a nice double bed Which is very, very comfy That ladder looks really interesting It's not the most comfortable It's made of old whiskey barrels Wow Did you make it yourself? Yeah So that is old barrel staves Because we built the van during the lockdown, all the builders, merchants, and stuff were shut So we couldn't get our hands on timber and wood So we were just using stuff that was lying around And the best thing about the bed is you can just fling everything up there Forget about it and just... Everything disappears It's a really creative idea because when you're sitting down, you don't actually need that headspace above you Exactly And we've got all this space You have a bathroom as well Yeah I'm not going to open the bathroom It's a bit messy It's like a cloakroom as well We have just stuff and then we have a compostable toilet and the shower So it's good And the water, we get it from a burn just up the roads It's just flowing from the hills We have everything sorted Pretty good I think it's the nicest van I've seen It's so cozy, so welcoming And it's so unique Yeah We've got whiskey The next morning before leaving the peninsula, Calum gave me a tour of the Ardnamurchan Distillery 584 00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:07,950 Welcome everyone to this small but new distillery in one of the most westerly distilleries in mainland Scotland We started distilling here way back in 2014 So this is a big year for us because we're just about to turn 10 But it'll be fun I'll show you around and kind of give you an insight into what we do here at the distillery But the major things that make Ardnamurchan Ardnamurchan is, first of all The people who work here We've got a great small team here putting their hearts and souls into making what we think is a fantastic whisky And we're also making whisky in pretty much one of the most sustainable ways you can And it's a big push to what we do So we are kind of proud of our kind of environmental credentials And the fact we use biomass to power our distillery from locally planted forestry We harvest that We take it two miles past the distillery Turn it into wood chip And then bring it back here And then we have a whole rewilding plan to reforest this part of Scotland which is fun We have hydropower on our water supply And we have solar panels on the roofs of our warehouse So pretty much self-sufficient here Which is a big part of what we do We do that because it makes sense It means we don't have to rely on things coming along that road to the Ardnamurchan So as I said, we make what I would consider very much a West Coast Highland-style whisky here And we do that simply by making 50 % peated spirit And 50 % unpeated We peat that barley to about 30 parts per million So it's like a mild but really lovely kind of campfire smoke And we'll bring these flavors together before we bottle it And it gives us control in terms of our style and our flavor That's quite unusual about Ardnamurchan And even I forgot to say When it comes to powering the distillery, obviously it takes a lot of energy to make whisky And our biomass boilers It's great Because not only does it power everything we do here at the distillery It also has the ability to heat the local houses in the area So we have the holiday rental next to the distillery which is powered by the distillery And our neighbouring houses are also powered purely from biomass Just from the excess heat from production Which is pretty cool But let's take into the distillery and have a wee look around So this is our malt bin This is where we take in all our grain The barley is all malted It's grown in Fife, a lot of it is malted up in Bairds maltings And it's delivered to us 28 tonnes a go And if you remember the roads that lead you to the AArdnamurchan Pretty mental So to think of the truck driver bringing all our malted barley here is kind of insane And then we can take it into the distillery and use it in production So when we first get the barley delivered here, the malted barley The first thing we do to it is we crush it down So we can gain access to the starch So we take it from this To this just by passing it through a mill And this is what we can extract the sugars from quite simply It's essentially porridge If you want to simplify things So we'll add water to this in the next stage of production So we can convert the starches to sugar We can get a lot of sugar We can get a lot of alcohol And we're in the business of making whisky The more alcohol, the better, from our barley Calum gave me a tour inside the distillery And then we had a look inside some of the warehouses So I think this will be quite exciting for you Obviously here in this really beautiful part of Scotland And the nicest thing about the distillery is we keep all the casks here They mature here So they can almost like soak up the environment here But wait till you see Ruth, on you go Have a look in there Wow, the smell of the whisky really hits you as soon as you walk in Everything we do here is traditional, down to our warehousing So we have traditional dunnage-style warehousing And if you don't know what that means That means we've got earth floors And the casks are beautifully stacked on top of each other up to four high There's nothing kind of holding these in place They're just... really well stacked It's quite an art, to be honest These are some of our really fancy Spinola sherry casks So a lot of the casks we're using tend to be either things Like this American bourbon cask Or these premium sherry All our casks are painted either with a particular colour for each year Or the sherry casks, they'll have our roundel And all the details that we need to know about the whisky When you're in the warehouse and if you're looking around, you'll see a variety of different size casks We've got little tiny ones up the top there We've got our standard ASBs, American Bourbon barrels The biggest ones we use are these These are called Sherry Butts So very large 500-liter cask Yeah, you're talking like anything between like six and eight hundred bottles from one of these big guys The size of the cask really matters If it's a small cask, it will mature quicker If it's a big cask, it'll take longer to mature because there's less surface area And that's why we have so many different sizes So do casks ever leak in the warehouse? In an ideal world, no But, they do Casks are like a natural product With fluctuations in temperature, the wood expands and contracts And then over time, yeah, sometimes they can leak a wee bit Not necessarily a bad thing but if the leak is particularly bad then we want to have a look at it So there's whiskey leaking from this but it's not too bad It's just slightly But we can fix that You can kind of see in here this whiskey barrel has been repaired a wee bit So it's obviously leaked previously around this edge So what the guys can do Is they can remove the bands and then we can use Let's see if I can find some reeds We do an old traditional method We get these reeds Which is kind of foamy But when you open up the cask a wee bit, you hammer this into the bit that's leaking Tighten up the cask again, and then they swell up and seal the cask naturally So it's pretty cool With all the fancy technology of today The Scotch whisky industry, they tend to stick to the old methods that have worked for hundreds of years So we'll take you into the very first warehouse that was built here We have six warehouses, but this is like the OG warehouse My favorite, personally It's got that kind of old character to it Just mind your step But you still get that lovely, kind of whiff of air and whisky from the air It's great This is our original first cask ever filled at the distillery In July 2014 Very soon it will be 10 years old So it's gonna be a big year for us at the distillery It's the same kind of warehouse, it's an old dunnage-style With a few more interesting casks But yeah, you can see here, for example This is one of my favorite types of casks And these are Madeira casks, fortified red wine Similar to a sherry or a port But from the island of Madeira, just off Portugal Another unusual cask, because this is a Sauternes barrel, or a Sautern barrique You can see all these You might even know it's a lot of private names on casks So we, instead of making a gin What we could do is sell the whisky Like sell the spirit in cask Which was a good way of gaining revenue But with the distillery's popularity the way it is right now We're actually in the situation that we kind of need these casks back So we can supply the demand we have for the whisky Quite often we're actually buying these casks back off these people we sold them to originally And you can see on this cask Like how only in What this is from? 2016 In that short period of time, the environment here Like the salty air is having it in effect There's a kind of fungal growth on the cask And the bands are all rusted up So, you know, maturing here on-site does make a difference And here is our, receiver So when we distill, the alcohol comes off About 70% alcohol And we reduce it using water off the river, off the burn that flows past the distillery And we bring it down to 63.5% before filling the cask
And that helps reduce the amount the angels are going to take away And it's a good strength for the spirit to move in and out of the wood Make the whole colour Got to bear in mind When it's distilled, there's no color in the whisky You can see a little bit here, this tank's empty But you can see the spirit Crystal clear All the colors should come from the cask Some distilleries do add food coloring Some for good reasons, some, you know I would never say that we're doing it better than them But what I would say is that Whisky is a batch process And depending on your market If you're sending whisky all around the world and it's different batches you send And they visually look different because all the whisky ages differently If they visually look different Sometimes the consumer will get confused And maybe not trust the product So we still add a little coloring to make everything standard Which is fair enough We don't add any caramel coloring just because a lot of the people following our whisky are really in the know And they look for the fact that our whisky is natural And we try to keep everything as authentic and as natural as possible All the casks are filled literally here by a team of four or five guys And it's not a very high-tech process Even though we're a brand new modern distillery, everything is done here by hand and by people Which I think is a nice thought The casks are sitting here Turn the lever and listen for it to fill When it makes a different noise, you turn it off and the cask is full Which is pretty fun That can carry 8,000 liters of spirit This is how you get out the bungs? Yeah, so I think we call it a bung extractor And if you imagine, you put that on the top of the bung And what we'll do is we'll hammer that down Twist the thread into the bung And then just simply Pull out the bung with a nice strong pull And then we can sample the casks We can gauge the casks So we're using that to measure how much liquid is in the cask How much whisky we can possibly get out of that barrel after the evaporation, after certain little leaks, etc. We were very lucky that Calum's colleague who was working on the casks returned to the warehouse And showed us what he was doing He opened a cask and then extracted a sample of whisky This was in order to check the alcohol percentage And how much whisky is left inside the cask 60.5% So it's not lost much strength That's 2018, in 6 years it's only lost 3% alcohol Yeah Whatever that is, 3% So a really nice thing to try at the end of a tour of the distillery Is obviously our amazing single-malt This is our core release This is what we'd say our flagship bottling This is really the one you want to try Because it represents a lot of what we do here at the distillery 65% ex-American bourbon casks 35% sherry Similar to what we have in our warehouses 50% peated spirit And 50% unpeated So yeah, it's just a little whiff of smoke on the finish It's really, really nice And it's bottled at 46.8%
And it's natural color and it's un-chillfiltered It's all the good stuff And probably the coolest thing and something that's really quite unique to Ardnamurchan Is we have this little QR code on the back of the bottle Now, if you scan that It will tell you absolutely everything You could possibly want to know what was into this whisky Full transparency From the species of barley To who bottled it, who distilled it How long the fermentation was, you know Actually everything Everything you could possibly want to know So we put a lot of kind of heart and soul into this whisky And we want to tell We want to boast about how good it is We want to be as transparent as possible To ensure, you know, you're getting a really good quality product So this will be the one that people will be most likely to find? This is the one you're most likely to find And it's definitely one I would recommend trying Particularly if it's the first Ardnamurchan you're going to try Because this is like our staple And I'm sure most people will like it Which I hope they do The best thing about the distillery this year is... Little Bay Brownies I've set up a little stall here Probably the best coffee on the peninsula And not to mention, probably the best brownies in Scotland Like seriously dynamite brownies And they're massive as well So if you try these, they're AMAZING! Thank you so much I've had such a wonderful few days getting away from the tourist hotspots Exploring the quieter Ardnamurchan Peninsula And reaching mainland Scotland's westernmost point See you next time
2024-08-07 03:20
