Bowmore
Taste the current World's Best Single Malt straight from the source — then take it upstairs to the bar for one of the best whisky views on Islay.
The distillery isn't in production for the rest of 2026 while essential maintenance work takes place. The visitor centre, bar, and tours are all still running as normal — you just won't see the stills actually working on this visit.
Islay's oldest distillery — balanced, elegant, iconic.
Bowmore doesn't tuck itself away at the edge of the island like some of its neighbours. It sits right in the middle of the action, at the head of Loch Indaal, in the village that borrowed its name. Founded in 1779, it's the oldest working distillery on Islay — and it wears that age well.
Walk up the hill and you'll spot the Round Church. Ask a local why it's round and they'll tell you, dead straight-faced, that it was built with no corners for the devil to hide in. Nobody's ever proved them wrong.
Inside, the age shows up in better ways. Bowmore still turns a portion of its own barley by hand on traditional malting floors — a handful of Scotland's distilleries still bother, and this is one of them. And somewhere below the visitor centre, the No.1 Vaults age whisky in a chamber that sits below sea level. Nowhere else in Scotch whisky quite does that.
Save time for the bar. It's not a token add-on — up on the top floor, with a wall of glass looking straight out over Loch Indaal, it's genuinely one of the best pours-with-a-view on the island. Plenty of people who never book a tour still make the trip just to sit here with a dram.
- In 1841, Windsor Castle ordered a cask of Bowmore — proof this "friendlier" style has been winning people over for well over 180 years.
- Waste heat from the distillery's own kilns is piped to the local Mactaggart Leisure Centre, warming the village swimming pool. Bowmore's been heating Bowmore for years.
- Six wooden washbacks in the tun room are each named after a past owner of the distillery, a tradition going back to 1779.
- The tasting bar upstairs doesn't take bookings for individual visitors — Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–4:30pm, just walk up the stairs and sit down.
Don't come to Bowmore expecting a smoke bomb. That's Ardbeg's job, or Laphroaig's. Bowmore plays it cooler — medium peat, sea salt, a soft sweetness underneath that makes it one of the friendlier Islay malts if you're still finding your feet with the smoky stuff. The core range runs young and citrusy up to the Sherry Oak Collection (12, 15, 18, 21 years), where dried fruit and spice from the sherry casks meet that maritime backbone. Ask the bar if the 21 Year Old is pourable — it's the one that just won the whole world's-best title, and that's a dram worth the extra ask.
Start in 1779. David Simson sets up shop on the shores of Loch Indaal, making Bowmore the oldest distillery on Islay — though the paper trail only really starts in 1816, when John Simpson took out the first licence anyone can actually point to. History's a bit blurry that far back.
The Mutter family bought it in 1837 and turned it into something properly commercial — they even ran their own steamship to get casks off the island. It didn't stay in one family's hands after that, though. Over the next 75-odd years the distillery changed ownership several times — through the Sherriff family, then William Grigor & Son — the kind of quietly turbulent history most old distilleries have if you look closely enough.
Then the war came. RAF Coastal Command took over the buildings, flying Sunderland flying boats out over Loch Indaal to watch for U-boats, and the stills went cold for years. Whisky-making picked back up after, and in 1963 Stanley P. Morrison bought the place — the era people still talk about, thanks to the legendary Black Bowmore. Suntory (now Beam Suntory) took full ownership in 1994, and they've held it since.
That long story landed somewhere good in March 2026: Bowmore 21 Year Old Sherry Oak Cask was named World's Best Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards in London. Islay's oldest distillery, making one of the best whiskies on the planet, 247 years after it started. Not bad going.