Isle of Jura 'Superstition'

Brand/Distillery : Isle of Jura - Superstition
Age : N/A
ABV : 45%
Region : Island
Retail Price inc VAT : £ 29.95
(Recommended Retail Price £ 32.49 you save £ 2.54

Isle of Jura Distillery Notes:

Isle of Jura is the only distillery on the island of Jura. Open-air or cave-based illicit production around Craighouse is thought to have progressed to distillation in buildings in the village by 1810; certainly the local laird had a mill with kilning facilities built at Craighouse in 1775, which would have been useful for preparing malt. It was a time of expansion for Jura. Two years later, Thomas Telford completed the new road round the south of the island and there were change-houses at Feolin Ferry from Islay, Craighouse, Corran House, Lagg Ferry to Keills on the mainland and Kenuachdrach in the north.
It was not until 1831 that William Abercrombie was listed as the distillery's first licensee although until 1876 there was a number of operators, only two of whom lasted more than 12 months or so. In that year James Ferguson bought the business and rebuilt the distillery. The conditions of his lease from the local laird were very demanding and eventually friction and illwill prompted the Ferguson family to strip out their stills and machinery and abandon the distillery in 1901. Almost 20 years later, the Fergusons were still being pursued in court for payment of repairs the laird insisted was due. The roofs were taken off to avoid having to pay rates on the buildings and the shells remained thus until 1960, when a new distillery began to take shape thanks to two local men.
George Orwell's landlord and the owner of the Jura estate commissioned the rebuilding of the distillery to help stimulate the local economy. Jura's original production yielded a heavy, peaty whisky in the style of Islay just across the Sound, but when the new distillery was completed in 1963 the architect designed the whisky as well as the buildings. William Delmé-Evans aimed at the wider appeal of a lightly peated Highland malt and prescribed the tall stills needed to do the job. The distillery is now owned by the Whyte & Mackay group.
The whitewashed buildings sit pertly on the rise from the harbour, the cooperage from the original still in place at the edge of the roadway. The Jura Hotel opposite in an earlier guise was one of Jura's change-houses going back to 1742 and before; the lounge bar today used to be a thatched 'room and kitchen'. The view to the Small Isles and beyond is unimpeded.
The 1963 pair of stills was augmented by a second pair in 1978, all four being larger than most - a circumstance that contributes to the lightness of the whisky. In the same year building materials were transported by helicopter up to the water source, Market Loch, to construct a dam. The distillery has two separate water-systems: that direct from the loch is used for whisky making, and the 'town' water, which is sometimes chlorine-fragrant, for everything else. The spirit-receiver was made in the distinctly non-whisky-making town of Jarnac, at the heart of France's Cognac country!