Island Scotch Whisky

Scotland's many islands, with their varied landscapes and often remote locations, were long well suited to illicit as well as legal distilling, thanks to good water, access to barley and the difficulty of effective supervision from the mainland. Today active whisky distilleries can be found on Orkney, Jura, Skye, Mull, Lewis and Harris, and Arran, as well as on Islay, which is usually treated separately. Strictly speaking, however, "The Islands" is not an official Scotch whisky region in law: with the exception of Islay, island distilleries are generally grouped within the Highlands, even though the term remains widely used as a convenient stylistic category.

Generally speaking, island whiskies are often described as robust, coastal and occasionally peated, but the category is too diverse for any straightforward stereotype to hold for long. There are numerous exceptions, with several distilleries producing notably different levels of peat and very different house styles. Arran, for example, is better known for a sweet, fruity and fragrant style rather than for overt smoke, and has often seemed closer in profile to a fresh, elegant Highland or Speyside malt than to the heavier island stereotype.

Talisker, however, still comes close to embodying the popular image of island whisky. Distilled on Skye, it remains a pungent and energetic malt, combining maritime character, peppery spice, smoke and a balancing thread of fruit sweetness. If any whisky can be said to reflect its surroundings, Talisker makes a compelling claim, shaped as it is by one of the most dramatic and exposed landscapes in Scotch whisky.