Bruichladdich is a name that has had a sizeable cult following since its bottles started appearing on shelves. Its opaque aquamarine bottles are sure to catch one's eye, no doubt drawing people in who want to find out what exactly is inside.

Despite its cult following, not many know that the distillery was on the cusp of being forgotten and mothballed (closed) in the 1990s, but it was revived by a group of enthusiasts who became well known figures in the whisky scene.

While it doesn't have the long, active history of distilleries like Lagavulin and Laphroaig, it's certainly no less interesting. It was a distillery on the cusp of being forgotten, and one that clawed its way back into the international limelight with a few interesting figures at its helm.

So here we go! These are eleven things you should know about Bruichladdich.

1. The man who revitalised Bruichladdich, Mark Reynier, was met with an unfriendly welcome when he first went to the distillery.

In 1989, the current owner of Bruichladdich had barely even heard of the distillery (Pronounced brook-laddie). Hailing from London, the only contact with Bruichladdich the young wine-trader had was a dram of the distillery’s 15-year-old Scotch when on vacation with his brother.

Clearly, he was more than taken with this Scotch, opting to bike to the old, defunct distillery to find out more about this wonderful drink he just had.

Instead of a warm Islay welcome, however, he was unceremoniously met by a set of heavily rusted gates with an unfriendly “PLANT CLOSED, NO VISITORS” sign. Even more unfriendly, was the distillery’s caretaker in the courtyard. When Reynier pleaded for entrance, the caretaker merely glanced at him and said the words that would set off a chain of events that would kick-start the old distillery in a few years time.

“Nah, You can f**k off!”

2. Bruichladdich did not have a strong start after its founding.

The distillery’s creation hails back to 1881, where three brothers (William, John and Robert Harvey) decided to start a new line of Scotch blend. You see, these brothers had also owned the (now-defunct) Dundashill and Yorker grain distilleries in Glasglow. The plan was to combine the spirits of the three distilleries to create something entirely new.

Oddly enough, John was the only brother who was familiar with the art of distillation. What’s even more peculiar, is that John fell out with his other brothers even before Bruichladdich’s construction was completed. The argument stemmed from the lack of a formal written agreement on ownership.

Naturally, Bruichladdich was off to a bumpy start. The remaining brothers lacked distilling experience, and now they could no longer collaborate with Dundashill and Yorker to create a blend. In an era where larger companies like John Walker and Sons were already well-supplied with Islay malt, Bruichladdich struggled to find a market.

Despite the odds, Bruichladdich remained within the hands of the Harvey family through WWI and right up until WWII began. William Harvey’s son sold off the distillery, which then switched hands through many owners until it came under the control of Jim Beam and Whyte & Mackay Ltd (owner of Dalmore, Jura and Fettercairn) in 1993.

While the new owners deemed Bruichladdich “surplus to requirements” and mothballed the distillery in 1995. What the history books gloss over, however, is that one Mark Reynier had been working in the shadows, repeatedly trying to purchase the distillery.

He was soon to succeed.

3. Mark Reynier purchased the distillery out of passion (and perhaps spite).

There are two things we know about Mark Reynier. One, that he really liked what Bruichladdich made. Two? He really, really doesn’t liked being insulted.

After being crassly told to go away, Reynier decided to return the insult in probably what was the most hilarious way he could think of. Full of youthful anger, vigour, and love for good Scotch, he decided to buy the distillery.

Yes, while others may have traded insults and pedaled angrily away, Reynier proceeded to write to successive owners of the distillery offering to purchase it. For a decade he did this, and for a decade he was rejected repeatedly.

It was only in 2000 did then-owners Jim Beam and Whyte & Mackay Ltd finally acquiesce. Five years after they had taken over, they had decided to mothball the distillery, and didn’t really have any good reason to reject Reynier since they had no plans to ever use it.

Setting about to raise funds for the purchase, Reynier raised a whopping d £4.2 million from a group of private investors and £2.5 million from the Bank of Scotland, and Bruichladdich Distillery was acquired for £6.7 million (US$10.3 million).

4. Bruichladdich’s single malts go by several names, the most common being Bruichladdich, Port Charlotte and Octomore.

Bruichladdich is a fairly small producer when put in comparison with other Scottish distilleries. Ileaches like Caol Ila, Laphroaig, Bowmore and Lagavulin produce between 2.3 to 6 million annual litres. In comparison to these giants, Bruichladdich produces only an annual production of about 2 million litres of alcohol. 

“Caol Ila produces in a day what we produce in one week,” Jim McEwan once noted.

Yet Bruichladdich continues to release a barrage of different bottlings. There’s the eponymous fruity and fresh unpeated Bruichladdich expressions, the moderately-peated Port Charlotte (40 phenolic parts per million ) and finally the peat bomb Octomore expressions that are routinely the most heavily peated whisky in the world (more on that later).

Yet how does Bruichladdich manage to produce such a staggering number of different lines?

Their secret: unlike others, Bruichladdich is not reliant on business with Scotch blenders. It is free to produce as many different styles as it wishes without worrying about supplying a consistent flavour.

5. Bruichladdich resurrected it’s peated malt as an answer to consumers’ whinging.

Bruichladdich’s iconic Port Charlotte line is it’s first peated malt whisky. This line comes the closest to the quintessential Islay whisky with heavy smoke, savouriness and rich nutty flavors. It gets its name from the small village of Port Charlotte (3 km down the road from Bruichladdich. There may be cask style differences and terroir differences, but Port Charlotte is always made from 40ppm peated malt

The story behind its inception, however, is quite humorous. Before this offering, Bruichladdich’s whisky was mostly unpeated, and this led to quite a few people saying that the distillery wasn’t a true Islay whisky.

Naturally, Bruichladdich’s Master Distiller Jim McEwan got a bit ticked off by this. The distillery did in fact make peated malt from 1881 to 1960, so McEwan resurrected the peated malt to finally make these people stop complaining.

6. Bruichladdich created the world’s most heavily peated whisky.

To understand how they achieved this, one must understand where the distillery gets its peated malt.

Bruichladdich sources peated malt from Bairds Malt Ltd in the city of Iverness. One peculiar feature is that Bairds toasts the malt over an outdoor open peat fire. This meant that smoke levels were unpredictable and inconsistent - sometimes extremely peaty malt is made (200+ ppm).

Now, what's ppm? What is responsible for that signature smoky taste are phenols, specifically guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol. he higher the PPM value, the more phenolic compounds are present in the malted barley. This translates to a more intense smoky flavor and aroma in the final whisky.

Ever the innovator, McEwan proposed something unheard of. What if they made whisky from highly peated malt?

This was how the Octomore was born. Peating levels begin at a minimum of 80 ppm, but they didn't stop there. The first release was distilled in 2002 at 80.5ppm. Subsequent batches have reached over 300 ppm, becoming some of the most peated whiskies available. The unpredictable, highly experimental nature of the process also means no two releases have the same peat level. 

7. Bruichladdich lucked out with its first master distiller.

For what was essentially a ghost distillery, Bruichladdich chose one heck of a master distiller.

With a certain level of audacity and much more perseverance, Reynier had his mind fixed on one man to be his master distiller: Jim McEwan.

For those not quite into Scotch, McEwan was the David Bowie of the Scotch industry. With how some spoke of him, you’d think he was the founder of Scotch himself. At the time, he was working at the rival Bowmore Distillery and had a solid 38 years of experience working his way up as an apprentice cooper, whisky blender, distiller and global ambassador. McEwan was also a charismatic native Ileach who was born and raised on the island.

When petitioned by Reynier, McEwan surprisingly agreed with great readiness. Turns out, the notion of resurrecting a ghost distillery using a limited budget enticed him greatly, and he quickly left his jet-setting job at Bowmore (he was travelling around the world to hold whisky masterclasses at the time).

It was under his guidance that Bruichladdich revamped its old grounds (mentioned below) and kick-started itself back into a regular-functioning distillery. Ever the purist, he is also the champion for Bruichladdich's move for transparency. 

Port Charlotte and Octomore lovers can also credit their favorite spirit's creation with McEwan, whose continuous innovation has made sure Bruichladdich has had a steady line of releases with different peat levels and cask finishes.

8. Most of Bruichladdich’s equipment is its original Victorian-era equipment.

When McEwan arrived at Bruichladdich, he was confronted by what was essentially the furthest thing from a functional distillery. With only four wars, no roof, and dusty remnants of yesteryear, it was a distillery only in name.

In fact, some of the old Bruichladdich whisky surplus weren’t even stored in good quality casks, and had to be re-casked with fresh wood.

But the two men faltered not, and between January and May 2001, they labored away, overseeing the dismantling, cleaning, repair and reassembly of the old Victorian-era grounds.

You might think they had great, lofty ideals that rationalised the retaining of 120-year-old Victorian equipment; surely, it was to re-ccreate the taste of an 1881 Bruichladdich? This might have been the case, but the pair had more pressing concerns.

With a limited budget of only £300,000 for renovations, the team had to minimise costs, causing them to repair broken equipment themselves or source for cheap second-hand components for replacement. Most of the distillery’s equipment was (and still is) the original equipment built by the Harvey brothers in the 1800s.

All this effort would be put to good use, when Bruichladdich finally distilled its first cask in May 2001, decades after Reynier had his first dram.

9. Bruichladdich set itself apart as a pioneer in the whisky world that highlights the terroir of its malt.

No, not terror, terroir. Pronounced “the-wahr”, Glenfiddich’s focus on this is influenced by Reynier’s origins as a wine merchant.

Terroir is a French concept used to refer to the environment’s impact on a crop’s growth, and how it affects the taste of the drink made from the crop. This takes into account environmental influences such as soil, sunlight and climate– among many other factors.

Used more often in the world of wines, it helps wine lovers explain the different profiles of wine grapes harvested from different farms in different environments. While other distilleries might have hailed it as pretentious pseudoscience, terroir became an integral part of Bruichladdich’s philosophy in whisky-making under Reynier’s leadership.

In reality, there is an actual science behind it, showing strong evidence that whiskies made from barley grown under different environments actually have different flavour and mouthfeel. Reynier blames the wider whisky industry for being too profit-driven, overly focused on growing climate-resistant barley that ensure sales and ignoring the importance of good terroir.

The distillery’s commitment to terroir can be found in all of Bruichladdich’s bottlings. Unlike others, they only use 100% Scottish barley, which is ideal for whisky-making for various reasons, including a lower nitrogen content.

For example, The Bruichladdich Islay Barley 2007 - Rockside Farm has a great degree of brininess and seaweed notes as well as the brightness of lemon zest, while the Bruichladdich Bere Barley 2010 has a more unctuous texture with an intense sweet malty note and well-rounded quality.

Despite both offerings made entirely with Scottish barley, the former uses barley that hails from a specific farm on Islay called Rockside Farm, while the latter is made from “bere barley” a rare ancient variety of barley that was grown by farmers in Scotland for over thousands of years.

10. Bruichladdich commits to a very high level of transparency in its whisky, showing consumers how its whisky is made and where its ingredients is grown.

To other, larger influential spirit groups like Diageo, Reynier was a bit of a loose cannon. The earliest signs of his “troublemaking” stemmed from accusations that the larger Scotch industry for fed drinkers misleading “propaganda” about the Scottish provenance of their whisky, when in fact ingredients such as barley could be imported from Ukraine.

This isn’t quite a brand-new concept, but how did Bruichladdich apply this to their products? Recall the opaque, aquamarine color of Bruichladdich’s Classic Laddie offering. Note that unlike other spirits, you cannot see the color within.

Yep, Bruichladdich wanted consumers to look past color, and consider the whisky for everything beyond surface-level appearances.

For those needing a new bottle sometime soon and wanting to see this transparency in action, go to their website and find out for yourself. Anyone who purchases a Classic Laddie or Laddie Eight bottling is provided with highly-detailed information on the barley provenance (i.e. terroir-relevant information), cask types used, and age of the youngest component of the whisky.

In its advocacy for transparency, Bruichladdich is also unafraid to double down and support other producers attempting a similar venture. Several years prior, nonconformist blenders, Compass Box Whisky Co. campaigned for a change in the law after it got into legal hot water with the Scotch Whisky Association releasing excessive information about the contents of their blended Scotch.

While other producers of Scotch remained silent, or even scooched slightly away from associating with Compass Box, Bruichladdich publicly announced their support, going so far as to promise to publish the age and origin of casks in their Classic Laddie offering.

11. Bruichladdich was once on the radar of US Pentagon agents who were tasked to locate Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Yes, one of the world’s largest intelligence agencies had set their eyes on a humble Scottish distillery nowhere close to Iraq.

Remember when we said Bruichladdich had a great focus on transparency? Well, there was a period where the distillery maintained 8 webcams that live-streamed the different steps of the whisky-making process at Bruichladdich. Reynier’s idea was to show the world that Bruichladdich uses the most traditional methods to distil whisky.

One morning in 2003, Reynier received a surreal email from a US Pentagon operative, Ursula, who admitted that agents had been watching the live-streamed webcams of the small Islay distillery. Not your usual spam mail.

During the period of the Iraq War, there was a high alert out for agents to monitor every and any clue that might point to the production of chemical weapons of mass destructions (WMDs). It turns out, the copper stills and distilling equipment Bruichladdich used was uncannily similar to equipment used to make WMDs. Thankfully, they quickly realised the distillery was producing something very far from WMDs.

Apparently, the Pentagon was using Bruichladdich’s videos to “train” their operatives (if you could trust Ursula’s words). She explained that the whisky distillation process is actually very similar to the process of making certain chemical WMDs, what with the use of reactors, batch processors and evaporators.

Nonplussed, Reynier found this highly amusing after his initial alarm, and ended up commemorating the incident with a special bottling- the Bruichladdich 1984 Whisky of Mass Distinction expression.

Lok Bing Hong    A budding journalist that loves experiencing new things and telling people's stories. I have 30 seconds of coherence a day. I do not decide when they come. They are not consecutive.