NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

If it seems odd to consider air an ingredient, you
have to stick your nose in a glass of Islay singl
e malt. Along with all the other components, a sav
ory whiff of salty sea breeze is unmistakable.
The sense of mystery in the terrain is palpable as
well. “As you explore you can see how it compress
es its secrets into tight parcels: dune-fringed be
aches, remote hills, cliffs, caves, peat bogs, sta
nding stones, lost parliaments, abandoned township
s and Celtic memories,” Michael Jackson wrote in “
Whiskey: The Definitive World Guide” (DK, 2005). “
It is a tapestry of geographical and historical tr
easures through which whiskey runs like a golden t
hread.”
It’s this air of mystery, along with a reputation
for the smokiest, most robust and challenging malt
s, that seems to set Islay apart from Scotland’s o
ther whisky regions. Most experts, however, agree
that whiskies can no longer be classified geograph
ically. Production methods have become so homogeni
zed that they no longer reflect local eccentriciti
es as much as they do a distiller’s predilections.
The smokiness comes from the tradition of using pe
at — bog soil made of decomposed vegetable matter
that was harvested to fuel kilns used for drying b
arley. Assertive peating has long been a trait of
famous Islay malts, like Laphroaig, Lagavulin and
Ardbeg, but it is not exclusive to Islay. And just
as much a part of the Islay tradition are gentler
malts like Bunnahabhain (BUN-na-hah-ven) and Brui
chladdich (brook-LAD-dy), which are lighter in bod
y and more floral than peaty. Another tradition, s
hared throughout Scotland, seems to be names that
are impossible to sound out phonetically.
Our 20 Islay single malts included bottles from ea
ch of the eight working Islay distilleries. Indeed
, two of the eight, Bruichladdich and Ardbeg, were
dormant for years, only to be reawakened to disti