Kilchoman. Fifty-eight whiskies.

Kilchoman stands on Rockside Farm near Machir Bay, in the northwest of Islay. Anthony and Kathy Wills started there in 2005; it was the first new distillery on the island in over a century. On 14 December 2005 the first casks were filled.

What sets Kilchoman apart is that the whole chain lies on the farmyard. Part of the barley grows on the farm itself and is malted on its own floor, for about ten hours over a peat fire. That yields malt of about twenty ppm. The rest of the malt comes from Port Ellen and sits at fifty ppm.

The stills are small: two wash stills of three thousand litres and two spirit stills of sixteen hundred. Since the expansion of 2019, the distillery can make around 480,000 litres per year. By Islay standards that remains modest.

From field to cask on the same estate: few distilleries on Islay can say that.

At almost every Scottish distillery, the malt comes from a large commercial maltings. Kilchoman does the same for most of its production. But for the range called 100% Islay, everything happens on the island: the barley grows on the land around the distillery, is malted on its own floor and dried over its own peat.

That own malt is peated at around twenty ppm, lower than the fifty-ppm malt from Port Ellen. The 100% Islay is therefore not the smokiest Kilchoman, but it is the most its own. A new edition appears every year, with its own number.

We have eight of them, from the very first release up to and including the fifteenth edition. All eight at fifty percent.

A lower peat level, but the only one that comes entirely from this island.