For the first time we offered a festival bottling, 258 bottles from a 3 year old single bourbon cask at natural cask strength . This was available for sale from 10.00am but people started queing from 06.30 and by 08.30 the queue was up into the car park !! All the bottles were sold by 11.00 which left a few disappointed people , better luck next time.

Pigtown fling, a folk band from Oban played throughout the day and a bar and bbq kept our visitors entertained and well fed.

At the end of the day we raffled a bottle of the festival release and raised £400 for local RNLI funds . the bottle was won by a member of the Pigtown Fling band.

Mark Gillespie of Whiskycast was on Islay for the Whisky Festival in May and visited all the distilleries . Listen to the piece he did at Kilchoman.

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Episode 259 : May 27th2010-06-08

There have been suspicions that some greater influences have been at work at Kilchoman given the superb standard of bottlings coming out of one of Scotlands smallest distilleries .

The above photo of MD Anthony Wills taken recently surely adds some proof that this is indeed the case.

For all the lovers of Kilchoman whisky out there, a little piece of weather news from Islay .

We are currently having a prolonged spell of very dry weather which has, shock horror !!! led to a temporary cut - back in production at the distillery . Following on from a very cold dry winter we have had less than half of our normal rain - fall for January to June 2010 .

All of this means that we are monitoring our use of water  very carefully and producing only when we feel we have sufficient supplies to complete the production cycle.

We must stress however that there is no need to panic as we have good supplies  and we do not anticipate any need to ration our whisky as yet.

Please continue to enjoy your Kilchoman and leave the "weather worries" to us.

The annual Islay Beach Rugby tounament was held at Port Ellen beach on Saturday June 12th . The competition was as tough as always with approximately 30 teams in contention for the prizes.

The Kilchoman Distillery team won the Plate competition after a very intense series of matches . Distillery managing director and team manager for the day Anthony Wills was delighted with the result especially as all three of his sons played for the team. 

Despite many approaches from various ex - professional players to represent the distillery Kilchoman have resolutely adhered to the amateur traditions by only fielding players who can be regarded as of strictly amateur status . 

The Kilchoman team displayed a thoroughly professional approach to celebrating their victory however with the Kilchoman Malt flowing well into the night. 

During our distillery open day on 27th May some fund-raising was done by Gina and Vicky who are long-time friends and supporters of Kilchoman . They raised the fantastic sum of £400 which was presented to Captain Malcolm Anderson branch chairman and David Mac Lellan  lifeboat coxwain  of the local RNLI on 29th June .

Our picture shows David receiving the cheque from managing director Anthony Wills with Captain Anderson and John Mac Lellan looking on.

Thanks are due to all other distillery staff and helpers and also of course to the many friends of the distillery who contributed so generously on the day. 

The work of the local lifeboat crew and the RNLI in general is extremely important in our community and worthy of support .