For Burns, the story of barley is the story of whisky, a premise Bruichladdich was happy to adopt when the distillery was revived in 2001. Founded in 1881, it became one of nine working distilleries on the Isle of Islay and was shuttered in 1994 after being declared a “surplus to requirements”. Wine merchant Mark Reyneir reopened it following the seven-year hiatus, and engaged distiller extraordinaire Jim Ewan to work his magic on the old stocks and stills — most of the original equipment remains and is still in use today.
Bruichladdich ambassador Chloe Wood on how the whisky maker mastered the rules just to break them
The ballad of John Barleycorn by Robert Burns is a tribute to the cereal crop that has kept the Scots fed since the Middle Ages — and watered (via whisky) since the 1800s. It paints the crop as a proud protagonist, put through the indignities of harvest, mashing and malting, only to be celebrated in song as a hero: “Then let us toast John Barleycorn, each man a glass in hand; and may his great posterity, ne’er fail in old Scotland!”
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