Distilleries in Islay

The isle of Islay is famous for single malts, in particular single Islay malts have a peat flavour.  Currently, there are eight distilleries in the island.  I have not drunk malts so many times until then, since its alchol is too strong for me, but I have interested in it, so I visited there this time.  First, I visited Bowmore ( http://www.bowmore.com/age-verification ) which become a wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese spirit company, Suntory ( http://www.suntory.co.jp/index.html ), in 1994, since we had already booked, but they were closed because the date and time was Sunday morning....I did not know why they received our request...  so we went to Laphroaig ( http://www.laphroaig.com/home.aspx ), Lagavulin, and Ardbeg.  Then, we joined Laphroaig tour at 3 pounds.  We could see the process of making single malts from smoking malts to distillation, and taste single islay malt scoth whisky 10 years old,alc 55.7%.  We saw sprouted malts and fermentation and tried malt smoked by peat.  The most interesting process was distillation, because that was controlled human and we smelled sweet flavour like a caramel.  The whisky was also sweet, peat flavor and sharply.  Next, we went to Lagavulin ( http://www.discovering-distilleries.com/agecheck.php?redirect=/index.php ), but their tour was only weekday, so I tasted only 16 years old, which was stronger than Laphroaig, but it was thick and balanced.  Lastly, we visited Ardbeg ( http://www.ardbeg.com/ardbeg/ ).  Ardbeg was the most capital invested distillery where we visited.  They opened restaurant and had a large shop space for tourists.  I tried 10 years old and Uigeadail.  Both color and taste was far different for me.  10 years old was clear, fruity, and sharp, Uigeadail was amber, caramel, and refined.  I enjoyed it with mussels which were small, but tasty.  I really enjoyed malts, but this must be the awful entrance of malts... On the way back, we found stope of peat which is a type of soil consisting of decaying plants that can also be used as fuel by Macmillan.  (We are really good students...) We thought that mining is a really hard job...  Especially, the climate of Islay is rainy, windy and cold.  Therefore, I supposed that this strict climate is a reason of making good single malts.

Thank you for your reading to the end.