People make pilgrimage to Islay. People make pilgrimage to visit our distilleries.

Distilleries are a modern day equivalent of sacred sites. The soul is very literal – perhaps it allows us to replace one type of SPIRIT for another…!

People have come to these islands on quests and pilgrimages for centuries.

Most holy spaces originate around a spring. The Spring is the life giving blessing of our Holy Mother Earth. She provides water. She provides nourishment. This is why we have fonts in churches and chapels. In the first instance people were nourished and replenished by the water of the spring, and the stones were built around this life giving water creating the building of church or chapel. 

Water is  a holy blessing in and of herself. People came here for the original sustenance. People came to drink from a perceived place of Spirit in the landscape. 

We see the same today. People come from all over the world – sometimes making the trip of a lifetime, to ritually drink from a place in the landscape. People come here to drink the spirit made in a place in the landscape – an Islay distillery, a Scottish distillery.

People come to drink the spirit of place – to drink  whisky/UISGE BEATHA – WATER OF LIFE  which is created here.

They toast to life and friendship and kinship and love and all good things. People come here alone, with friends, with family, in business groups.   Scotch whisky binds us together in community and Kinship.  This is why the Club associated with The Islay Whisky Academy is named THE KINSHIP. 

It is said that architecture developed from people making pilgrimage to holy wells at specific times in the year, and architecture developed from their ritualised movements around these springs or wells.

Are distilleries the holy wells of our secular world? In a similar way that Raves were the ecstatic cathedrals of worship of the 80’s and 90’s.

There are such levels of emotion flowing to these places. Can we imagine distilleries being  today’s version of the holy sites people invested emotion and hope and faith in in days of yore.  When Bruichladdich sold out to Rémy Cointreau  in 2012,  people were crying, they were phoning the distillery. It was like their favourite Aunty had died. It’s not just the place, it’s the connection to spirit and place and the Kinship that people felt.

 Driving into Bowmore village from Port Ellen direction,  I say … “and here is the Round Church, built this way so there are no corners in which the devil can hide” … and as we slowly drive around the curve and drive on down Main street, I say;

” …and we have a house of the spirit at the top of the street (referring to the Round Church) 

… and a house of the spirit at the bottom of the street” –

by which time they are looking at Bowmore Distillery!! 

To Experience more Magic and Learning about Scottish Spirit and Culture, sign up for  IWA DIPLOMA Certificate Teaching week in Oct 2025. 

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5 Days of Indepth Whisky Making and Scottish Cultural Experience on the Isle of Islay.