The lifelong whisky chaser

10 April 2012

Jim McEwan wants to write a book one day. He's already got a title: The Journeyman's Journey. As whisky stories go, it should be a cracker. Here's an outline.

It begins on the small Scottish island of Islay. If you want your fate to be intertwined with the wild warmth of Scotch, then this is the island to get yourself born on. Other islands (Jura, Mull, Orkney, Skye and now Arran) have one or two distilleries; Islay has seven.

Moreover four of those (Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Ardbeg and Bowmore) constitute malt whisky's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They gallop out of the bottle, thunder up your nose and across your tongue, and leave you changed utterly, possibly terrified and probably prostrate. Every whisky-drinking biography ends with Islay.

You might, then (as Jim did), manage to be born in an impoverished household in Main Street, Bowmore. You might dawdle to school past Bowmore distillery, peeping through the window and revelling in the scent of the peat kilns. "Never mind going to school today," the maltmen would say. "Come in and give us a hand."

And you'd sweep the malt barns while the maltmen would sit and watch, slicing their tobacco off juicy blocks, and smoking their pipes. They'd pay you for your industrious truancy with four empty lemonade bottles, worth three pence each. Nine pence would get you into the village-hall cinema on Thursday night, and the remaining cash would buy you "three penny dainties. What more could a boy ask for?"

Thus inspired by this neighbourhood paradise, Jim nourished no other ambition than to become a cooper there. Against the odds, and with legal intervention to circumvent union restrictions which stipulated only one apprentice for every six journeyman coopers, he succeeded. He became a cooper at Bowmore in 1963, training under Davie Bell, whose craftsman's motto he still cherishes. "Dae it right, Jimmy; there's nae bugger coming behind you."

Of course, the story could have ended there. Jim could still be a cooper. His school classmate Eddie MacAffer, just one week older than Jim, is head maltman at Bowmore today; Jim might have aspired to that prized job (there are only six in the world). But he was bright, ambitious and well endowed with what we now call "people skills". He was made warehouse manager by 1969; got the call to train as a blender in Glasgow in 1977; and was back to Bowmore as distillery manager in 1984. The lad from 7 Main Street had done well.

I've met lots of distillery managers, but in truth I've never met one quite like Jim McEwan. Mostly they are thoughtful and effective, doing a good job to make their beautiful factories run with quiet efficiency and deliver maximum whisky yield per ton of barley for their masters.

Jim the Evangelist is different. There's a driven quality about him. The sense of broader perspectives, of the way whisky fits into Islay culture like a backbone into a skeleton, is never far. You feel he's fighting for his people to be better understood, their work to be appreciated, and the craft traditions to be maintained (computer-run distilleries are a pet hate). You might detect something romantic in this, and you wouldn't be wrong. When I called distilleries "factories", Jim will have bristled. Mostly they are, in truth, but Jim McEwan's Bowmore was a community centre, a whisky atelier, a sensory workshop, a collapsed forest, a palace of the spirit world.

All credit to Suntory (which bought Morrison Bowmore in 1994) for letting it be. Not only did it let it be, but it turned Jim into "international brand ambassador" in 1995, and sent him off on an orgy of air miles to evangelise wherever Bowmore was sold.

Its trust was rewarded when Bowmore won "Distiller of the Year" in both the UK and the USA last year.You might have thought, after 40 years in the business and with that sort of success, the journeyman's journey was almost over. But you'd be wrong: Christmas brought a sensational development, which I describe in the postscript.

If you're planning a Burns' night celebration on Thursday, what can Bowmore offer as a haggis-chaser? Like the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it is peaty - but not wildly so. Its peat levels are between 20 and 25 parts per million phenols, which is about half the peating levels of Laphroaig, Lagavulin and (especially) Ardbeg. Enough, in other words, to give you some of the rugged autumnal character unique to burnt bog; but not too much to swamp the cask notes, the resilient fruit of the new-make whisky, and (most pleasing of all) the salt vapour which blows straight off neighbouring Loch Indaal and smothers the casks for years on end. Balance and succulence are the two words I'd choose to distinguish Bowmore from its peers.

As with many malts, the range has grown rather unwieldy in recent years, while the packaging is a little too similar for clarity. Legend is the cornerstone, aged in 70 per cent bourbon casks and 30 per cent sherry, and to be honest it's almost my favourite: I love its salty energy, its sprightly zing, its sappy tang, its blithe smoke (widely available, eg Sainsbury's £19.49). The 12 Year Old (Oddbins £22.69) is a fatter beast, rich and toffeed, oily as winching gear, with the squelch of moist peat as a backdrop. The 17 Year Old (Oddbins £35.99), strangely enough, seems more aerial, graceful and candied, though complex and creamy too, with hints of salt-pickled lemon and moist black vanilla. The 21 Year Old (Oddbins £53.99), finally, is caskier, alive with the hessian and brine scent of the Bowmore warehouses, freighted down with raisins and chocolate.

In common with other distilleries, Bowmore has also released a series of finishes including Darkest (sherry), Dusk (claret) and Voyage (port). As you'd expect, these trowel in the sweetness and the fruit to symphonic effect, subduing the peat notes. Great whiskies - but I prefer my Bowmore pure and smoky, which is why I'm so happy with Legend.

The earthquake rocked Suntory's head office just before Christmas: Jim McEwan was leaving. What on earth had persuaded the lad from Main Street to quit his beloved Bowmore? Since 1995, the saddest sight on Islay has been the forbidding bolted doors of Bruichladdich distillery - the large and graceful stills cold and quiet, the only ones thus muted on the island. On 19 December, this distillery was bought from Jim Beam Brands by independent bottler Murray McDavid, headed by London wine merchants Mark Reynier and Simon Coughlin of the La Reserve group, together with Gordon Wright, a member of the family which owns Spring-bank Distillery on Campbeltown. You've guessed: they've got Jim McEwan to run things on Islay.

"Och, man," McEwan said when I rang him on the island last week, "it's Indiana Jim and the Temple of Drams." He was tired of travelling, he said. "I wanted to get back to distilling. My heart is here; this is a great adventure for me." The fact that this precious distillery has escaped the multinationals and will now be run by people passionate about both whisky and Islay is uncommonly good news. Much of the investment money has come from the large estate owners on the island. The aim is to produce at least three malts - the virtually unpeated Bruichladdich of tradition, as well as mildly and richly peated whiskies, too; with the first distillation scheduled for the end of May. We have much to look forward to - and the journeyman's journey continues.

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