Not open to visitors. Laggan Bay filled its first cask on 2 April 2026 and is producing, but there is no visitor centre and no regular tours. It opened its doors once, for a single public event during Fèis Ìle on 31 May 2026. Check directly before planning any visit around it.
Not yet — but this is the one to watch. The plans go well beyond a visitor centre: a bar and restaurant, a tasting bothy looking out over the sea, and fourteen houses for the Islay families who work here.
Islay's eleventh distillery — producing since April 2026, not yet open to visitors.
Laggan Bay became Islay's eleventh working distillery when it filled its first cask on 2 April 2026 — Leonard Russell of Ian Macleod Distillers, his son Tom, and distillery manager Malcolm Rennie doing the honours. It is the fourth distillery in the Russell family's hands, after Glengoyne, Tamdhu and Rosebank, and the first they have owned on Islay: a long-held ambition rather than an opportunistic buy.
It sits at Glenegedale, directly opposite the airport and less than a mile from the Big Strand, the seven-mile beach in Laggan Bay it takes its name from. That makes it the first distillery most visitors pass and the one nobody notices, since you are usually looking for the car hire desk at the time.
The site runs to about two hectares and was granted permission alongside a brewery on the adjacent plot, a joint project with the Islay Boys. The plans are unusually ambitious for a new distillery: a visitor centre with a bar and restaurant, a tasting bothy overlooking the sea, an educational facility to house an apprentice programme, and fourteen houses for Islay families working on site — which, on an island where housing is the constraint on almost everything, may matter more locally than the whisky.
None of it is open yet. The distillery is producing, the whisky is maturing, and the only time the doors have opened to the public was a single event during Fèis Ìle in May 2026.
- Opposite Islay Airport, so it is the first distillery you pass on the island and the one you are least likely to notice
- Named for the Big Strand, the seven-mile beach less than a mile away in Laggan Bay
- The fourth distillery owned by the Russell family, after Glengoyne, Tamdhu and Rosebank
- Fourteen houses for distillery families were part of the same plan — unusual, and locally significant on an island short of housing
- A brewery, run by the Islay Boys, was approved on the adjacent site at the same time