Article On Carnish Distillery

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A magical location, a mysterious man called Marco, a Harley Davidson and a sneaky sample of still-maturing whisky – Tom Morton reports from the new distillery on the Isle of Lewis PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN MacLEAN

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CARNISH, ISLE OF LEWIS Tom Morton was photographed at 10.50am on 6 November at Carnish, Uig looking out over the Atlantic coming in at Uig Sands. In the distance are the villages of Crowlista and Timsgarry. The hill in the distance is called Forsnaval

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sun-kissed beach in the Bahamas; the first run of the day on a crisp, new-laundered Rocky Mountain slope; catching the perfect reef break off Hawaii’s North Shore... nothing compares to this. I’m standing next to a decaying caravan on the Black Mount, sipping bad instant coffee and gazing out across Rannoch Moor in full, autumnal glory. A miasma of mist swirling in beams of golden light, the copper-and scarlet glint of leaves, and a tame stag munching on someone’s abandoned vindaloo. Perfection

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would accompany this wondrous Highland morning with, perhaps, an aged Highland Park, teardropped with water from the burn. And a forgiving pony for transport, rather than a Citroen C4. Actually, I should have been progressing north aboard a restored, customised Suzuki GS1000 motorcycle, but circumstances (wives, weather, weakness) have conspired to insert me into a car. I am, however, in a search of a motorcycle adventure, even in November, even in a country as killingly cold. I am also on a whisky mission, to go, boldly, where noone has been – to the western limits

o f d i s t i l l a t i o n . To m i x t h r e e languages, to the absolute ultima thule – the edge of the world – of uisge beatha. Somewhere on the Isle of Lewis, a mysterious gentleman called Mark (“call me Marco – everybody else does”) Tayburn has built a distillery. Abhainn Dearg, translated as Red River, is in production. Little is known about it. And so I am heading for Ullapool, there to catch the Stornoway ferry. It’s 15 years since my last trip to the Western Isles, researching Britain’s most remote golf courses for a book. I was travelling then on a Kawasaki Z650, with a set of clubs strapped

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to the rack. Abiding memories include a night drinking Islay Mist in South Uist with a man whose father helped liberate the wrecked SS Politican of its cargo. Whisky Galore, indeed. The Abhainn Dearg distillery is not the only such project under way in the Hebrides. Proposals are well advanced for The Isle of Barra Distillery, which has detailed planning permission and in whose casks of the future you can already invest. Less-than-legal stills have always existed in the Western Isles. Whisky is in many a place name, CONTINUED OVER LE AF

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from ‘Still Burn’ to the ‘Still Bar’ aboard the Isle of Lewis, the ferry I find myself swaying gently on as we leave Ullapool. The fine weather is holding as I arrive in Stornoway, but darkness falls quickly, and so there is little to remind me of the weeks I spent scrabbling for stories here during the Bank of Credit and Commerce International crisis, when the local council lost £23 million. How quaint that sum seems now, given all that’s happened! But I do meet up with John, the only photographer I know who doesn’t drive a car. “I have thought of getting a motorbike,” he says. Ah yes, motorbikes. Might there, I venture, be any chance of obtaining a motorcycle temporarily for me to indulge my ‘Born to be Mild in the Western Isles’ fantasies? “Would you prefer a Harley Davidson or a Suzuki?” he asks. As I already have a Suzuki, I plump for the Harley. Get your motor running! Head out on

the single track road equipped with passing places! But first there is whisky to deal with. I phone Marco. “Ach, Tom” comes a very island voice. “You sound just like that fellow out of Eastenders. You know, that wide boy. That chancer. I can see how you got into broadcasting!” I arrange that John and I (I will give John a lift, though I’m tempted to see how he gets on bussing or hitching) out to the remote northwestern part of Lewis, to Carnish, by Uig, which is where the distillery has been built on the site of an old salmon hatchery. Next day, I meet Dave Halliday, recently laid off from the local tweed mill, who allows me to trundle his Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 through some of the most spectacular coastal scenery in Europe. Tolsta is a beach of eye-wateringly golden hue.

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ave’s is the rustiest Harley I have ever laid eyes on. But it throbs and burbles in the requisite manner, and it is thrilling to play Easy Rider in the Western Isles, stopping in passing places and waving at pensioners in pickup trucks. “Are you a biker? I used to have a Suzuki Katana, tuned. What a bike that was!” The speaker is Marco Tayburn. An hour’s drive out of Stornoway, into increasingly-narrow roads and rugged scenery, has taken

It is thrilling to play Easy Rider in the Western Isles, stopping in passing places and waving at pensioners. us to Uig, which has yet another beach of jaw-dropping beauty. This is where the famous Lewis chessmen, a chess set carved to resemble two Viking armies, were discovered, and a massive wooden facsimile of the King towers over a small car park. It’s interesting just how Viking these islands are. I’m here, at the most westerly distillery in Scotland. The old salmon hatchery may look untidy -20-

and in some disarray, but once you get past the carved Abhainn Dearg sign and the excisesabotaged sma’ still used as a gatepost, you enter a very functional operation indeed. This is not the first legal distillery in Lewis. Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth, owner of the Isle of Lewis between 1825 and 1844, built one in Stornoway that staggered from one crisis to the next. A hint as to the causes of its demise may lie in the term still use in Lewis for a tooliberal serving of whisky a ‘MacNee Dram’. Mr MacNee was the last head distiller before the operation failed. Marco, on the other hand, looks like a man to whom failure is not an option. Everyone in WWW.SMWS.COM

LEFT: the Harry Potter-meets Flash Gordon-style still room; BOTTOM LEFT: Tom sits pretty on his borrowed bike; AND FAR LEFT: ready to capture that first taste

are douglas fir and the spirit receiver is oak. “I believe in tradition,” says Marco. “And that everything contributes to the final taste.” There is a loose bung on one twomonth old bourbon cask, and I have the chance to sample the first of the new Lewis spirit, put into cask at 65 per cent. It is, literally, breathtaking, but astonishingly sophisticated and assured. Light, Dalwhinnie-esque, perhaps. Marco, hands-on at the spirit safe, nose twitching, knows exactly what he’s looking for, and appears to have found it. There’s little peat – the malt is imported at the moment from Scotland at around 25 ppm. This is well-made spirit and, I think, it will be well-finished whisky. The Royal National Mod returns to Stornoway in 2011, and the first legal Abhainn Dearg whisky will be launched there. The Mod, nicknamed the whisky Olympics, seems set for some record breaking in three years time. As for me I wouldn’t miss it. And I’ll take my Suzuki. Only then will this mission be properly accomplished. For the moment, though, I have been to ultima thule and tasted its spirit. And that’s enough. Lewis knows Marco. He is a successful businessman. “Call it recycling, Tom. We’re in the recycling business. Construction. Well, to be honest, I’m a scrappie.” And what about distilling? What brought him to this new venture? A moment’s hesitation: “Let’s just say I have…past experience, and leave it at that.” So we do. But it later emerges that Marco has done the Bruichladdich course, and that his knowledge of distilling is deep and extensive. He is also a man with a vision. “What I wanted was a whisky that is made here in Lewis. Everything should be local. We have here a magnificent setting, the best water – very, very soft and THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY

peaty – and the whisky is being matured here too. It will be bottled here, and I am building a floor maltings at the moment.” The words tumble out at great speed. But the hard evidence is all around. The foundations of the maltings have been laid, and two single-story dunnage warehouses are neat and sound, with one of them already holding maturing spirit in a mixture of bourbon and Oloroso casks. And there’s more. “I have several farmers here who are going to grow barley for me. And there’s obviously plenty of peat for the malting. This whisky will be unique in that everything will be local. And ecologically sound too! For every oak barrel we import,

we’re already planting oaks in a plantation nearby.”

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nd so to the stillroom. Those stills look like central heating boilers, very long ones, with squinty witches hats on top. Harry Potter pot-stills. Designed by Marco to take full advantage of reflux in order to produce a lighter spirit, made partly by McDonald Engineering and partly by a local firm, the wash still holds 2200 litres, the spirit 2000, with Marco looking at an annual production of about 50,000 litres per year. Everything in the system, except the stainless steel mash tuns, is copper or wood; the washbacks

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About the author Tom Morton has been a keen motorcyclist since teenage nights spent doing wheelies on local golf courses aboard a Raleigh moped. His 1992 book ‘Spirit of Adventure’ saw him visit many of Scotland's distilleries riding a MZ ETZ250 and sidecar, a trip later repeated for TV. Now best known for his daily music show on BBC Radio Scotland, he has has a new novel, Serpentine, out in June 2009 on Mainstream