“Bruichladdich is quite an aspiring and tastefully built village, and is planted don one of the finest and most healthy spots in Islay,” wrote Alfred Bernard, a sojourner through world of whisky distilleries in the 1880s. During his travels, he put pen to paper recording the status, layout, vibe, and production processes of a remarkable number of distilleries, including Bruichladdich. Many of the distilleries he wrote about in his massive tome “The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom” are long shuttered. Many at the turn of that century, while others fell casualty to the turbulence of the 1920s or thereafter.

The art this week is based on a photo from near the time that Bernard visited; at least my reference and the engraving in the book look a lot alike. Of course I have reimagined the distillery with some giant cats working at it… and I may have gotten carried away doing a whole series of these.

Today, the distillery looks very much the same; a few buildings have changed, but the core of the layout from 1881 remains. The distillery was nearly a late 1990s casualty of the Whisky Loch, a period of over production and inventory saturation that led to a dramatic downturn in the industry beginning in the early 1980s. Imperial, Rosebank, Littlemilll, Caperdonich were all late casualties in the 1990, but did not have Bruichladdich’s good fortune to reopen in short order (though Imperial and Rosebank have reemerged more recently).

There is surely an alternate universe in which the distillery remains closed; that might have been its fate in our timeline had Jim McEwan and the group behind Murray McDavid won an auction for Ardbeg and never had to turn their sights on Bruichladdich (equally intriguing to consider is if Signatory Vintage had won the auction for Ardbeg, they moved on to Edradour instead.)

The distillery reopened in 2000 after intermittently operations in the 1990s; while the exterior is remarkably similar to the original, the interior needed a great deal of work, including new stills. The renaissance of Bruichladdich is one of the great stories of the 21st century whisky industry, and it happened at exactly the right moment to ride a rising tide of interest and enthusiasm in scotch. The image of the spirit as an old man’s drink faded, and the birth of internet communities through message boards, blogs, websites, and chatrooms, allowed for the emergence of a real “imagined community” of whisky enthusiasts- we may never meet, but we have shared a dram.

I find Bruichladdich produces one of the more characterful whiskies of our current era. It can be downright eccentric with its lactic, milky, creamy heft which can come off as baby vomit or butyric acid in some cases. The unpeated malt is distinctive and immediately recognizable for those qualities. While I may not always enjoy it (I love Port Charlotte, but am rather cool on Laddie), I love that the whisky offers something different from the norm: no one is going to forget Bruichladdich or call it an anonymous Speyside “Glen-whatever.”

Up this week is a host of Laddie from across different eras including the 70s, 80s, 90s, and rebirth in the 2000s.

Artwork this week is my own: I used an handful of old reference photos of Bruichladdich and added some wonderful cats to work at the distillery.