On Islay, time behaves differently. Sea light shifts by the minute, casks breathe with the tide, and the air carries a salt tang which clings to the copper stills. In this meeting of weather and willpower, second chances arrive rarely. Adam Hannett was there when one of them did.
When he joined Bruichladdich in 2004, the Victorian distillery had only recently been resurrected. Built in 1881 on the wild Rhinns of Islay, it had been mothballed in 1994, its stills silent, its workforce scattered. The buildings might have gone the way of so many others had it not been for wine merchants, Mark Reynier and Simon Coughlin, along with maverick distiller Jim McEwan who bought the site in 2000 and coaxed it back to life the following year.
