![Lagavulin’s distillery and stylish new bar can be found between Port Ellen and Ardbeg, on a road that takes you past the Laphroaig Distillery](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/10/20/TELEMMGLPICT000353746725_16978152359210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqgsaO8O78rhmZrDxTlQBjdLdu0TL-Cg_AMOUqySXmFgU.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Whisky tourism is turning Scotland into 'Disneyland' - but is it a price worth paying?
With increasing pressure on communities such as Islay there are concerns the burgeoning industry could prove more ruinous than beneficial
![Lagavulin’s distillery and stylish new bar can be found between Port Ellen and Ardbeg, on a road that takes you past the Laphroaig Distillery](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/10/20/TELEMMGLPICT000353746725_16978152359210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqgsaO8O78rhmZrDxTlQBjdLdu0TL-Cg_AMOUqySXmFgU.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Life used to be tranquil on the sandy, Atlantic-lapped coastline of Machir Bay, on Islay’s remote western edge.
Even when a farmhouse distillery at Kilchoman, just back from the sweeping sands, opened in 2005, it was still just a tiny addition to the seven already spread out across the 240-square-mile island eulogised as the “Queen of the Hebrides”. But the first new Islay distillery in more than 120 years was just a taste of things to come.
Soon this bijou island (smaller than Skye and Anglesey) will harbour 14 distilleries. Unprecedented money is pouring into Islay as the popularity of whisky – and in particular single malt whisky from a single distillery, rather than blends – draws in the drinks industry behemoths.
Glenlivet-makers the Chivas Brothers have just announced their first Islay presence. Out east, Bunnahabhain has also been revamped, as has the drab Caol Ila distillery, with a new visitor experience part of Diageo’s reported £185 million investment in Scottish whisky tourism.
Meanwhile in the south, again on the Diageo dime, Port Ellen Distillery is undergoing a £35 million resurrection (following closure in 1983) aimed squarely at the luxury market, with expensive “experiences” rather than traditional tours rumoured locally to be the new set-up.
East along the coast, Ardbeg has doubled capacity with two gleaming new stills thanks to the deep pockets of owners Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) – one of the world’s most illustrious brands investing in a small corner of Islay that barely saw a visitor, let alone hordes of whisky devotees, a few short decades ago is remarkable. Between Port Ellen and Ardbeg, on a road that takes you past the Laphroaig Distillery, is a stylish new bar at Lagavulin’s distillery. And as for Kilchoman, it has since massively upped production, its cosy farm home transformed into a large operation with a swish visitor centre.
![The farmhouse distillery at Kilchoman, just back from the sweeping sands on Islay, opened in 2005](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/10/20/TELEMMGLPICT000353747546_16978143543000_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqxgS_9fpGFLIdu3VCjptHnUDoFDdXtCk5oOvei4sPQEg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
It’s a pattern repeating across the country. Last year, as the number of 70cl bottles exported grew by more than 20 per cent year on year, with double-digit growth in China, India and Taiwan, alongside strong figures in traditional markets such as France and Germany. New distilleries are springing up and whisky tourism has gone into overdrive, with new visitor centres and whisky-themed attractions, notably in the isles, Speyside and even in Edinburgh. Long gone are the days when the only offer at distilleries (if they let the public in at all) was a begrudging basic tour.
‘Disneyfication of whisky tourism’
But now there is a backlash. Concerns in some communities have emerged over the impact and a danger of the “Disneyfication” of whisky tourism, with the corporate takeover ushering in ever more expansive shops, “fake” old barrels gimmicking up the decor, pressure on local services and – whisper it – a glossing over of the spit-and-sawdust working of the distillery itself. Could Scotland’s burgeoning whisky tourism industry actually prove more ruinous than beneficial?
At the bar in the Islay Hotel, local sentiment – Islay has a population of just more than 3,000 people, the slightly smaller Isle of Man boasts more than 80,000 – is largely positive. But one man I meet is less convinced: “It’s just getting too much with distillery after distillery. We’re a small island really and this is just putting too much strain on the roads and the ferries.” This sentiment echoes the 200 signatories to a Change.org petition against a new distillery in 2020.
Rumblings of discontent have been reported from community groups, with talk of local infrastructure groaning under the weight. Some estimates put the costs of bringing Islay’s roads up to scratch at more than £15 million to accommodate whisky-industry vehicles. The aged ferries are struggling, too - when services are disrupted, so is the vital flow of passengers and barley tankers.
Solutions to these issues are not simple, though. Under the UK’s current constitutional arrangements, those whisky billions are syphoned off to the UK Exchequer, with the Scottish Government then using the funding they receive back to try to support what amounts to more than 10 per cent of Europe’s coastline and almost 100 inhabited islands in a world of soaring costs. Islanders understandably protest that too little trickles down; Scotland is a country unable to freely borrow money to invest in infrastructure at scale.
![The Caol Ila distillery visitor centre on Islay is proving popular with tourists](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/10/20/TELEMMGLPICT000353747944_16978147355650_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqgsaO8O78rhmZrDxTlQBjdLdu0TL-Cg_AMOUqySXmFgU.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Yet the situation could be worse. You don’t need to look far for struggling communities on Scotland’s west coast. Take Campbeltown on Kintyre. Once, Glebe Street was said to flow with as much money as the City of London, but 30 whisky distilleries nosedived to one by the Eighties, devastating the economy. And the community. “Whisky was even more important to us than maybe we realised,” says Iain J McAlister, manager of Glen Scotia, one of a handful of the now resurgent distilleries there. “So it’s a relief and a joy to see the distilleries and whisky tourism picking up again.”
Neighbouring Jura is half Islay’s size, with a population of under 200 and one utilitarian distillery. Depopulation haunts this archipelago; it has done since the baleful Highland Clearances. Few isles enjoy the success story of Eigg, where a Scottish Government-backed community buy-out in 1997 has actually increased the population. Notably some of the teenagers who would previously have fled to the mainland from the neighbouring isles of Canna, Muck and Rum are looking at a move to Eigg instead, demonstrating an encouraging appetite to stay in the Hebrides.
For some Scottish islands, whisky isn’t an inconvenience: it’s a lifeline. Just ask Arran, where a second distillery has recently been welcomed, or Harris, where the first malt release of their new distillery seems to have been universally welcomed.
‘Good times for whisky’
And Islay can scarcely take its own whisky success for granted. Colin Gordon, Ardbeg’s Distillery Manager, explains: “These are the good times for whisky. Ardbeg was closed down along with many other distilleries in the Eighties as the whole industry slumped, but now we’re booming again with demand for quality single malts around the world growing.”
Gordon, countering the idea of Islay becoming some sort of boozed-up whisky Disneyland, insists that the purity of the dram remains paramount: “I’m a whisky romantic,” he smiles, as we peer out over the traditional dunnage warehouse towards the Atlantic. “And what we make is magic, making a wonderful drink out of just three things – malted barley, water and yeast. That is it, it’s quite a story that people are really interested in.”
![Colin Gordon, Ardbeg’s Distillery Manager, says these are 'good times for whisky](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/10/20/TELEMMGLPICT000353747813_16978145288130_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqaOHwGYxO9YXCTNKElnkoG9XOKEBy83DBupfCH8LX3eE.jpeg?imwidth=350)
It is hard not to feel romantic on a spectacular coast alive with otters and dolphins, where whisky ages slowly inside the surf-lashed dunnage warehouses. I meet warehouse manager “Dugga”, who I first encountered here 20 years ago. The whisky industry provides job security and breathes human terroir. Dugga’s partner Jackie is another Ardbeg legend, running a visitor centre that is not just style over substance. A nod to the whisky tourism zeitgeist is the food truck where you can tuck into local langoustines with an ocean view and sip a dram below a wall emblazoned with street art.
I meet a whisky enthusiast from Sheffield, who loves Ardbeg but reckons it’s “like a spaceship landed in this remote place”. Were distilleries to exist in isolation they would be more exposed to Disney comparisons. But though Ardbeg lies three miles from the whitewashed waterfront charms of Port Ellen, it is joined at the hip. Ardbeg’s parent company LVMH recently bought the Islay Hotel, where panna cotta meets seafood from the local boats. These are hard times for Hebridean hospitality, but the waitress tells me: “LVMH has broad shoulders and they are welcome here.”
It’s not just the Islay Hotel. Like other distilleries, Ardbeg invests in the community, a lifeline other isles don’t have. Gordon is modest, but a distillery worker at Ardbeg tells me: “Ardbeg has been part of the community for over two centuries. They have invested in a new community hub, as well as into local roads and pathways.” Neither of them boast that Ardbeg recently donated £1 million to Islay causes from the record-breaking sale of their oldest ever whisky, the 1975 Cask No. 3.
Sting in the tail
Yet communities need homes, which is another sting in the tail. Across almost a dozen Islay trips, I’ve never left without meeting at least one local hamstrung by the lack of housing. New whisky jobs mean more accommodation pressure. But other islands, Skye in particular, suffer under the weight of demand for holiday lets. At least one new distillery is promising to build half a dozen or more new worker homes. “That would help, they need to do something”, my taxi driver tells me on the way back to the airport.
Back on the mainland, the Scottish capital is mirroring the Islay boom. In Edinburgh’s centre, the new Holyrood Distillery has released its first single malt this month. In the Leith port district, Crabbie’s Bonnington Distillery began single malt production in 2020, and The Port of Leith Distillery, the UK’s first vertical distillery and easily the most spectacular opening this year, has brought 50 jobs. “It has sometimes been hard to keep tourists in Leith after they visit Britannia,” distillery co-founder Ian Stirling tells me as we peer down on the Royal Yacht. “Our distillery, with its new tours, aims to encourage visitors to stay on as Leith fights back from the darker days of the Eighties when the last of the whisky warehouses were closing.”
In late 2021, Johnnie Walker opened a landmark multi-floor visitor experience in a massive old department store right on Princes Street, with glitzy audiovisual trickery backed up by live actors and a rooftop bar. It joins the existing Scotch Whisky Experience by Edinburgh Castle. “That all-singing, all-dancing whisky tourism is not my cup of tea, but there is a market for it,” says Pip Hills, founder of the legendary Scotch Malt Whisky Society, a membership organisation that bottles and sells single cask, single malt whisky, and welcomes guests with day memberships.
We’re sitting in the swish new members’ bar, part of a £500,000 investment, opened last month. “When we started in 1983, whisky tourism just wasn’t a thing – now it’s remarkable that people from all over the world make pilgrimages out to individual distilleries. When whisky tourism is done well – and on the whole it is done well – it benefits everyone.”