Working at the distillery involved the natural progression where one started at the beginning of the process and gradually worked through each area of the distillery. He spent the first 14 years, transitioning from Tun room to Mash man to Still man where he happily remained for 30 years until his 2022 retirement.
Another memory that stands out for him was in the Tun room one day while there were two Japanese journalists visiting. Robin repeatedly reminded them to be cautious of the slippery floor. Sure enough, one of them was standing in the stairwell with a high end tele-lensed camera and while he took photos from each step, he missed one and somersaulted down to the ground where the camera exploded into a thousand pieces. He was fine, the camera and equipment destroyed but thankfully the memory card was saved. When I asked Robin if he had ever met anyone famous he immediately mentioned Michael Jackson (not the pop star), first and in my opinion most prolific whisky writer to exists. Over the course of 3-4 days Robin spent time with Michael walking him through every square inch of the distillery, answering all his questions and of course sharing a few drams. He described Michael as a very smart man, dedicated to listening and learning everything he could. Robin and Jeannette have lived on Islay for 47 years, and although she refused to be seen on our video chat, she chimed in from time to time when I asked him about Islay life. They have raised two children, have 3 grandkids and are a very tight knit and grateful family. She also made me aware about Robin’s passion and keen eye photography. They love to spend their free time exploring some of their favourites places in the world – Islay and other west coast islands such as Skye, Mull, Orkney and Isle of Harris to name a few. His favourite whisky word: Slainté. Favourite whisky sound: At the end of a spirit run when he would crank open the steam valve and let the pressure off (I was there for that, and wow!) I also asked him what still excites him about the whisky industry: He’s quite fascinated with how it’s moving into an era where waste is managed much more efficiently, noting that Bunnahabhain now has a Bio-plant that runs some of the distillery on “draft” fuel. I also wanted to know if anything worried him about the direction of the industry: “Abundance of cask strength whiskies and maybe that there’s a glug of new distilleries”. If history teaches us anything, we’ve seen this Whisky Loch before and the aftermath of those that didn’t survive.
Th r ough the course of his career, he worked with 6 different distillery managers and lost count of how many employees he has
trained. I asked him to recount some of his favourite memories and two quickly came to mind. I’ll first give some context – Even in the early nineties, people visiting distilleries, tours and onsite gift shops didn’t really exists so when Robin first started working as a Still man, Feis Isle festival didn’t exists and it was rare to have busloads of tourists arriving at the distillery. Robin: “I was asked to give a VIP tour to a large group of Americans one summer, which was our silent season so most of our workers were on holiday. Somebody asked me if it was true that if Islay was lighter in the summer since so many distillery workers would leave for holidays to the mainland. Absolutely, I said, you should have noticed when you were on the ferry over, the plank-way was quite high when the bus came rolling off. Now, I thought I had said it with enough humour in my voice that people would have realized it was completely in jest, however wouldn’t you know it – 4 years later, I had an American who advised me his very good friend who was a whisky expert had it on authority that the island weighs more in the winter so sits lower in the water when all the residents come back from their vacations. I was flabbergasted”.
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the whisky explorer magazine
WINTER 2024
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