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TALES FROM THE STILLS
As part of the inaugural Islay Whisky Festival in June this year, the island’s Distillery Managers gathered in Bunnahabhain filling store to tell some of their favourite stories to an appreciative audience. Here we relate some of the stories told, text in bold is comments or heckles, either from the other managers or the audience. oOo "We were loading butts into the back of a lorry; mind these things weigh half a ton. We lift them with a forklift up to the lorry and roll them in. Nothing could be simpler. As a new boy I asked my foreman what happens if one of these rolls off? He said “Well son, if that hits the ground from that height it’s going to disintegrate—smithereens. I’ll give you one piece of advice—for God’s sake keep your mouth open! oOo
(Click on the picture for a better view). Pictured above are the participants: Front row; Grant Carmichael (retired Lagavulin and Caol Ila), Ian Henderson (Laphroaig) & James McEwan (Bowmore). oOo I recall one medical student who came to work with us for the summer. Today he’s one of this country’s top doctors and has worked at Stoke Mandeville and is very much a leader in his profession. On his first day, as soon as the customs officer and the head cooper had gone away, we gave him a sample from one of the 15,000 wonderful casks we were maturing in the warehouse. Everybody would have a bottle with a bit of string round it that you could drop into a cask and then drink at your leisure, or a rubber hose with a lead weight at one end so we could just sook away. (That’s terrible—that!) Yes, but we don’t do that any more! (Oh yeah?) Well, the young Doctor had a mouthful, and loved it. After half an hour he came back to me and asked “Do you think there is any more whisky we can try without them knowing?” With all his knowledge and training it just goes to show the distillery worker is by far the wisest job in the UK! oOo
That lady over there has very good taste, she has visited every distillery on the island and last night she told me her favourite whisky was Laphroaig! (Chorus: she told me it was Bowmore/Lagavulin/Ardbeg/etc!). oOo One day we were having a customs audit when two customs officers came to the distillery. Now we all love customs officers dearly, but these guys had summoned the manager by twelve o’clock and said there was an inconsistency and they would have to work through lunch if they were to get their five o’clock train. So they demanded sandwiches and the manager, keen to stay on their good side, found someone spare to run into town and get some. That person was Charlie who ran the effluent plant and wasn’t having a good day anyway—a sore head from the night before, the stench of his job which included domestic effluent as well as distillery waste, plus, while he was clearing out the screens he had sneezed and the top plate of his dentures had fallen out into the slurry! He had just found his teeth when he heard the phone ringing with the instruction to go and get the sandwiches.
So off he went in his wee van. On the way back he popped his dirty teeth in the paper bag to stop them from sliding about—and possibly breaking on the floor—with the intention of recovering them when he got back to base. But the distillery manager was so agitated when he arrived that he forgot his teeth and the manager grabbed the bag and took it to the customs men. He wasn’t long at the effluent plant before he remembered and realized that he was probably going to get the sack! So he made himself scarce for the rest of the day hoping that next morning the manager might have calmed down. Meanwhile the manager had taken the bag to the customs men, given them a dram and left them to it, after five minutes he heard this almighty scream and found the auditors, with the bag open and the extremely smelly dentures! Furious, the manager apologised and again left the office for the customs men to do their work. But they couldn’t think of anything except the dentures—they lost the plot completely! By five o’clock they had to leave but had achieved nothing. They called the manager and told him they had found nothing and all was okay. The next day a very worried Charlie was summoned to the manager’s office and was surprised to be greeted with a dram of the best whisky and the manager’s thanks for seeing off the customs men! oOo When I first came to the distillery as a wee boy we had one of the houses on the front where all the casks are piled up. I thought it was stormy every night because of the thunder and lightning. It was a long while before I realised it was just the old boys going through the stockpile looking for any residue by rolling the cask onto a frying pan. And the lightning? That was their torches against the window! oOo On one occasion the manager decided to have a purge on people using dunkers, the bottles used for getting whisky out of casks. Old salad cream or Milk of Magnesia bottles were popular because they fitted the bung hole, had a wide neck and filled quickly; brasso tins were good too. One day the manager was in a bad mood and decided he was going to put an end to dunking. He went in to no. 4 warehouse and the first thing he saw was a salad cream dunker. He grabbed the nearest man and demanded “Rab—is this your dunker?” “No-no-no, Mr Gordon, mine’s got blue tape round the neck!” oOo For a while Islay was the world’s greatest consumer of salad cream! oOo Here’s the scene: I’m eighteen years old and we’re in the warehouse moving the casks from the filling store for racking. With me is a customs man and Davey Bell, seventy-five years old and deaf; he fought in the first and second world wars but was deaf from hammering casks. He did have a hearing aid but was saving the batteries for the Queen’s broadcasts! Now because we were coopers we were a little better, we were trained, and in our front apron pocket we always carried a half bottle filled with stolen whisky—that’s because not only can we make casks but as coopers we can open them! As for these dummies behind me using salad cream bottles and leaded hoses—they’re amateurs! Now, Davey is five floors up, operating a small electric hoist to lift the casks from floor to floor. I’m on the ground floor and next to me is the customs officer who is chatting with me. My job was to attach the chains to the casks and then shout to Davey to hoist them up through the levels. “Davey” I shout, “That’s it ready, hoist away!” “What’s that son?—I cannae hear!” I shout again and cupping his ear he leans over the guard rail a little too far and the half bottle slips out of his top pocket. It falls. The customs man, because he’s to one side, doesn’t see the bottle coming, but I can. Do I catch it? Or not? Down comes the bottle. I can’t catch it; I’ve got a half bottle as well and I don’t want to be caught in any theft of the Queen’s property! Down comes the bottle, hits the cask. Smashes! The cap is flying across the floor and there is glass everywhere! Old Davey Bell at seventy five years of age takes to the stairs and damn near beats the bottle down! He lands on the ground floor at the same time as the bottle and kicks the cap and glass away, all this in front of a bewildered customs man. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder and says “Son, you see these new electric light bulbs? When they blow they make a hell of a bang!” oOo In the old days if you did a job, you got a dram. If you didn’t do a job you still got a dram. Thirty years ago you could have nineteen drams in a day! One at eight o’clock in the morning going on shift to get you started, one at eleven, midday, etc. One guy would even get out of his bed to get the six-in-the-morning dram as the night shift was knocking off! oOo That’s a true story, that. (I thought you said they were all true!) oOo Sometimes we’d use hot water bottles, tucked in the waistband and fill them with a rubber tube from the cask, a sort of reverse colostomy! oOo Never, ever mis-call my distillery or you come to a sticky end!
Here are the facts. Five years ago we entertained the top Russian naval chief, General Bobov. He came by Royal Navy helicopter, had a tour and a dram and as he was leaving he told me my whisky was good but Russian Vodka—better! When he got home to Russia, Gorbachov sacked him! Anyone who mis-calls my distillery comes to a sticky end! When Prince Charles came to visit my distillery—we have a Royal Warrant by the way—(Tell them about the plane crash!) When he came to endorse my whisky in 1994 he flew the plane himself into Islay; he has a pilot’s licence. Everyone knows that when you land a plane you should do so into the wind. Our usual air traffic control lady was removed for the day and we had some smart-ass from Glasgow who thought he knew better. He said no, Prince Charles will bring in the plane the wrong way with a thirty-knot tail wind. By the time the Prince had the plane on the ground he’d lost one third of the runway already! (Could he not have reversed it in?) Don’t get technical with me! I didn’t even know he’d crashed the plane. He got to the distillery only twenty minutes late. I gave him a tour and he’s a cool customer; the only comment he made about his adventure was that he thought it a pity that the airport wasn’t a bit longer! Of course some asked if he’d had a dram but as we all know, if he had he would never have crashed the plane! (Tell us about Camilla!) That’s right, it was the day they broadcast his interview about his crumbling marriage. The next day, in The Scotsman, the headline screamed PRINCE CHARLES CRASHES PLANE ON ISLAY! But in four columns of text it only said that he had visited a distillery! Not one mention of which distillery, and that the reason why he had come to Islay! I was at school with the Scotsman’s editor so I phoned him up and said “Come on, you didn’t name my distillery, why not?” He said “What sells newspapers is events not visits, yours is just another distillery.” I said, never ever say that, you will rue the day you mis-call my distillery.” Four weeks later, he was fired! Never, ever mis-call my distillery or you come to a sticky end! [Ooo err!—Ed]. oOo Port Ellen was the greatest distillery in the world for wash drinking! At two o’clock in the morning there would be a queue on the beach of people going to the distillery for more fermenting wash! oOo Here’s a quick one! At quarter to five, on Friday night we’re at no. 5 warehouse, and they’re unloading puffers at Ardbeg because we don’t have our own pier; the lorries take the casks to the puffers and they return with barley for malting. The drivers were very clever; they would get a dram at Ardbeg, they could drive quickly to Lagavulin for a dram, and another at Laphroaig, and they might get some wash at Port Ellen! So the lorry arrives at quarter to five on Friday, the driver is Donnie Mac and in the back is Angus-mhor, Big Angus, who worked as a baker by day but when a puffer was in everyone would come down and help out. Big Angus had an arthritic hip and was given to drag one foot along the ground. Remember that. We’re in the warehouse and we’ve all got our bottles ready for the weekend except Big Angus. “Christ boys, I’ve no bottle!” He’s despondent at the thought of a weekend with no bottle!
Then one of the boys noticed that Angus was wearing wellington boots! So it is now three minutes to five, “Angus, we’ll fill one of your wellies”. “Oh Christ no. No. Aye all right!” So we stand him next to a cask and we’ve got the rubber tube and fill him up. For your information a size nine wellington will hold about five salad cream bottles! This is important information! So Angus has about five salad cream bottles in a size nine Dunlop. The customs man is standing by the door and it’s now five o’clock and we’ve got to get past him and we’re all covered in whisky, hot water bottles, salad cream—the lot! So we send Angus out first, like a Trojan Horse—if he gets caught we can get rid of our bottles. So off he goes, dragging his foot, feigning severe pain so as not to spill any, and we’re watching as he slowly approaches the customs man, holding his bad leg and groaning and wincing in mock pain. The customs man is so impressed at this effort and suffering that he offers Angus a dram! We’re at the back silently urging Angus on. Keep going man! Don’t let us down— we want to get out quick. But Angus says yes, he will have a dram; perhaps that will help his leg. So the customs man gives him a dram from one of his sample bottles and just as Angus is raising the glass, he turns his head towards us just so we can see him wink!
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