First Impression....

" I'd never been to Islay till i came to work here , but a month before i was asked to come here they said go and have a look and see if you really want it . Jackie didn't come , it was just myself . your driving up the road and you go passed Laphroaig , you go passed Lagavulin ,you think it's great ! it's a bit sentimental ... You come to Ardbeg and you look down on the distillery and you think Jeepers ! What the hell am i doing here ! It looked so bad , it did , it was like a bomb site ! We had the chance at that time to put our heart and soul into it or get the hell back to the mainland , so with Jackie coming over 3 months later we really put our heart and soul into it and i'd like you to think we still retain the passion for it !"

The Re-building.....

"It's progressed so well , but we were so lucky in the instance that we employed the right people at the right time going back 6 years , in production and in this facility that is the visitors centre , one is inclined to come in of a evening when it's all quiet , calmed down and you come in here and on occasion you open the door down there and look in the visitors centre you think WOW ! this is pretty awesome , this is quite awesome ! You look in there and look up and see the kiln , oh wow ! I'm just so glad the company had the foresight to do that 6 years ago , because it's a wonderful marketing tool and it doesn't have to be to people who love and appreciate whisky . Because i always view it in the fact that you can be a person who maybe buys one bottle of malt whisky a year , could be at Christmas time and your presented with this wonderful choice as you are around supermarkets and you think to yourself , maybe we'd been to Ardbeg once and had a wonderful meal , Hmm.... i might just take the ardbeg ! It's that invisible effect if you like , it's so marvellous , the knock-on effect for sales of the whisky is really in part down to how good the food is here . "
"The hardest bit of the re-building has been that people always associated Ardbeg with quality but it was very , very difficult to get because 99% was used in Allieds blends at that time , the hardest bit of the job was taking it passed the anorak if you like , taking it passed the aficionado , taking it to people who like whisky but had never heard of ardbeg , but things have developed very well , six years ago this distillery was producing as little as 250,000 litres of Alcohol per year , now , this year , it is expected to produce 950,000 litres . now i'll probably astound you with the fact that ardbeg , worldwide , sold as little as 200 9 litre cases back then ! This year we would expect that to grow to 32,000 , that's how well this Malts doing . But it's always easier to market quality !"