Monday the 21st of October saw the start of the winter timetable for the Calmac ferries on the Clyde and west coast of Scotland. The wintertime is always the period that ferries get their annual maintenance and are taken out of service for several weeks and/or are rescheduled on other routes, to cover for other ferries. This has an impact on the number of ferries sailing to and from Islay and also on which ferries are sailing the Islay route. The winter schedule runs until the 26th of March 2020.

Below is an overview of the ferries servicing the Islay Route during the winter schedule of 2019 - 2020

Monday 21 October to 23rd November:
One ferry service with the Finlaggan

From 24 November to 31 December:
Two ferry service with the Hebridean Isles & Finlaggan

1 Januari 2020 to 17 February:
One ferry service with the Finlaggan

From 18th February to 6th of March:
Two ferry service with the Hebridean Isles & the Isle of Arran. Continue reading...

This edition in the Ileach: The Islay Boys Ltd., owners of Islay Ales, are planning to relocate the Islay Ales Brewery to Glenegedale into a new building which will also include a craft Whisky & Rum distillery. Experts such as Jim McEwan and Scott Williams are already on board and there are investment opportunities available. The Ileach Newspaper has a full page advert with more information.

New name: Laggan Bay Brewery and Distillery

This weekend, Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th October, there will be an open day at Islay Ales from 10am to 5pm for everyone who is interested to hear more about the new venture.

Tag: islay ales laggan bay brewery

Islay has a new festival to add to the growing number of annual events and this one has a focus on local produce in the widest sense of the word. The Taste Islay and Jura Festival is all about Food, Drink and Foraging. Both islands together have ten whisky distilleries and three gin distilleries. There is Islay Wines and Islay Ales and there is great food from the sea and land such as oysters, lobster, crab and fish and lamb, beef, venison and plenty of foraged foods too.

Taste Islay and Jura Weekend

The Taste Islay and Jura Festival will be held from Friday 20th – Sunday 22nd September 2019 and is organised by the local marketing group. There are many fantastic events taking place during this weekend so make sure to visit Islay and Jura and join the fun. Below is an overview of everything taking place but please note that some of these events have to be booked in advance. For bookings visit the new festival website

Friday 20th September

On Friday head over to Jura and Lussa Gin for a special Taste of Lussa Tour. A special 1 hour session discovering how the three women of Lussa create their gin, enjoy it paired with locally sourced venison and shellfish, all with a juniper influence. Read more.....

Scottish Whisky is booming and the production is on the rise in almost every distillery in Scotland. The rise in production comes from both the new distilleries that have been built, or are opening soon, as well as from the existing distilleries. If you look at Islay you can see that most distilleries have increased, sometimes doubled, their production in recent years, through distilling more hours per day and/or expanding the capacity itself.

One of these distilleries which have gone through this process is Kilchoman Distillery as their expansion plans have almost come to fruition, they are currently in the commissioning phase. This means that Kilchoman Distillery theoretically will be capable of producing 480,000 liters of alcohol annually. That is a huge achievement if you compare it to how they started in 2005 as a small scale farm distillery. In an article on their website Anthony Wills writes that "the investment of £6 million amounts to almost an entirely new distillery in itself". Read more...