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Photo: C. Michael Hogan, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This is a sea loch; at its head are the Gruinart Flats wetland, an RSPB reserve. Great masses of barnacle geese roost here in winter; look out also for corncrakes, hen harriers and otters. The reserve is always open. There are two trails, the Woodland Trail (a mile) and the Moorland Trail (2 miles). You can cycle from Uiskentuie (on the A847) along the B8017 to the visitor centre, and then north to Ardnave, 7 miles each way.
Loch Gruinart is a sea loch on the northern coast of isle of Islay in Scotland. Land at the head of the loch, Gruinart Flats, is a designated nature reserve owned by the RSPB. It is an important winter roosting site for barnacle geese. Ardnave Point is a coastal promontory near the mouth of the loch on the northwest of Islay.
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Bruthach a' Chladaich means "Brae of the Shore" and the distillery was founded by Loch Indaal in 1881. It was state-of-the-art for its time, with unusually tall narrow stills. It had stop-start production in the 20th century so it was never modernised, and the original equipment was restored from 2013 under the ownership of Rémy Cointreau. Those whiskies marketed as Bruichladdich are unpeated, those as Port Charlotte are peated, and Octomore is heavily peated. They also produce gin.
Independent distillery established in 2005, with the first whisky on sale in 2009. It's peaty to the same level as Ardbeg, 50 ppm.
This was founded in 1779 to become perhaps the only scotch whisky distillery to be owned by a German vice-consul to the Ottoman Empire. Herr Mutter even built a steamship to import grain and export the whisky. Anti-German sentiment finished off the business in 1915; it had a series of owners and spells of production before joining Beam Suntory in 1994. The product is shipped to Glasgow for bottling. Their 12-year old single malt is smoky and peaty, sweet with a citrus tang, but doesn't have the seaweed / iodine notes typical of Islay whisky.
It is housed in the former Kilchoman Free Church, which is very pointedly not in Kilchoman. That community became depopulated and 1843 saw a great feud and "Disruption" of the Church of Scotland. The breakaway "free" faction worshipped here in a righteous huff until a 1929 reconciliation made their Free Church redundant. The museum has over 1600 items, spanning from the Mesolithic period 10,000 years ago till 1950.
Loch Finlaggan is a freshwater lake. At its north end are two islands which in the 13th-15th centuries were the seat of the Lord of the Isles, until rule passed to the King of Scotland. A visitor centre displays various artefacts of that era. A bridge links to Eilean Mòr ("the Big Island"), which can always be accessed even when the centre is closed. Here the main ruin is the castle (simply a fortified house), plus a medieval chapel and 16th-century graves. You can't routinely visit Eilean na Comhairle ("the Council Island"), which has the fragmentary remains of the Lords' council chambers.
Ardnahoe means "the height of the hollow". It's independently owned by the Laing family and opened in 2019, with its products first on sale in Nov 2021.