Port Ellen: Too Big to Die

When Port Ellen Distillery closed in 1983, it seemed like it was for good.

Back then, it was another name on the long list of distilleries lost to the whisky loch era. Overproduction and plummeting demand had forced the Scotch industry to downsize, and Port Ellen was one of around 20 distilleries culled. Lagavulin and Caol Ila survived in SMD’s* portfolio, a clear indication of which distillery was deemed surplus. 

Yet, Port Ellen managed to become more famous in death than it ever was in life. With the Islay Festival coming to a close, we take a look at the distillery Michael Jackson called the “rarest of Islay malts,”** and how Port Ellen became too big to die. 

The history of Port Ellen Distillery

The distillery was founded in 1825 by Alexander Kerr Mackay and quickly snapped up by John Ramsay. He’s one of those annoyingly brilliant people for whom most things he touched turned to gold. Ramsay helped push through bonded warehousing laws, pioneered transatlantic whisky exports in 1848, dabbled in still design with Coffey and Stein, and even sorted out the Glasgow–Islay steamship service. Oh, and he was also an MP and chairman of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, just for fun.

Port Ellen’s early years were a carousel of innovation and misfortune. It’s often forgotten that Port Ellen had two long periods of silence. The first came when it was mothballed in 1929, but the buildings and warehouses continued to be used. It wasn’t until 1967 that it was revived (a 38-year gap, longer than the 34 years between 1983 and 2017) with a double-sized capacity and a renewed sense of purpose. A few years later, in 1973, the famous drum maltings were added—an industrial beast that’s still running today and supplies malt to most of Islay.

Plenty of whisky was made during this second act (1967–1983). But it was mostly swallowed up by blends. It was never meant to stand on its own. This makes what followed all the more remarkable. When the distillery was closed again in 1983, that should’ve been the end. There were no grand plans, no tearful tributes. Then, something strange happened. Something unexpected. 

The ultimate ghost distillery

Those casks, once filler for blends, turned out to be some of the most captivating single malts of the late 20th century. When Diageo (then United Distillers) began bottling Port Ellen under the Rare Malts series and later the Special Releases, it was like someone had opened a crypt and found treasure inside.

Dave Broom in The World Atlas of Whisky 3rd edition (2024) summarises, “Like Brora, it attracted the new wave of malt aficionados”. He explains that Port Ellen’s whisky was filled into refill casks to be used as “a punch of unadulterated peatiness in blends”. But when those old casks were left to mature and the atmosphere and climate came into contact with the spirit inside, something happened. Something that made Port Ellen whisky become “More complex, strange, austere, dissonant, mixing sweetness with smoked fish and tarry tea”.

That’s what makes Port Ellen’s whisky so compelling. It’s not a one-trick peat bomb. Styles vary dramatically from cask to cask. Some are briny and stern, all white pepper and sea spray; others are dark, leathery, and sherried to the nines. But the best share an almost architectural complexity with layers of peat, salt, minerality and old oak, stitched together in strange, thrilling harmony. 

The auction darling

At the point where Michael Jackson published his Malt Whisky Companion (1989), Port Ellen was already making waves. He described it as “seaweedy, peppery, salty” and a proper nightcap whisky. He also thought its closure was permanent. Can’t win ’em all. But he played his part in establishing why there was a desire, and the market did the rest. Stocks dwindled, prices rose, and a legend began to be formed. 

By the time the first Special Release dropped in 2001, a 22-year-old, the word was out. Each annual release became more sought-after than the last. A single cask bottled for Fèis Ìle in 2008 sold for just under a hundred quid, becoming a defining moment in the creation of the famed festival bottlings that people still flock to the island to buy to this day. If you want a bottle of it, you’d struggle to find one for less than £5,000. 

In 2022, a 1979 cask sold at Sotheby’s for £875,000. It came with an art piece by Ini Archibong, because apparently the whisky alone wasn’t rare enough.

Port Ellen: Too Big to Die

Of course, there’s only so much Port Ellen from the old days still around. That tends to happen when you stop making whisky and tear the production site down. The brand’s owner, Diageo, was only too aware of the shelf life of such a market. So it decided to make a massive play. 

I can recall where I was in 2017 when Diageo made the unexpected move to bring back Port Ellen. The Master of Malt offices were abuzz that day, I can tell you. In a seismic two-for-one, we learned that Brora and Port Ellen were to be resurrected.

What was initially tipped as a £35 million investment soon ballooned to £185 million, and the project became something else entirely. Far from a museum piece, it was going to be a working distillery with a foot in the past and an eye on the horizon.

Port Ellen: Into a Third Century

Above, you can see our drones capture the Port Ellen landscape back in 2018. It looks very different now. By March 2024, the stills were fired up again. Just like that, Port Ellen rejoined the living. It had gone from mothballed oddity to ghostly legend and finally to functional distillery again.

Port Ellen was never the most famous Islay name while it was operational. That came later. But what it did do—quietly, steadily—was make fascinating, frustrating, often brilliant whisky. 

The question is, does it have the tools, the team and the backing to do it all over again? That’s exactly what we explore in the second of our two-part Port Ellen special today: Port Ellen: Rebuilt For A New Century.

You can buy Port Ellen whisky from Master of Malt.

*Scottish Malt Distillers (SMD), bought by The Distillers Company, Limited (DCL) in 1925, the company that eventually became United Distillers and then Diageo. 

**In his famous Malt Whisky Companion (1989), which remains a superb insight into the whisky industry at the time of publication and a fine example of whisky writing in general.

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