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Fellow Drammers,
You’re invited to join us for a special tasting on Saturday, the 18th of July, starting at Noon Pacific / 3pm EST with George Elliott, who (at the moment) is the Isle of Jura Distillery’s Head Distiller. How this event came about is a fun story. A group of us were at the recent Feis Ile festivities, which is the big whisky festival that we normally think of as focusing on the Islay distilleries, but it also includes the Jura Distillery, which has been making whisky right there on the beach on Jura since 1810 (you can get to the Isle of Jura on a 10 minute ferry from Port Askaig). The festival runs 10 days long, and early in the week they held a “Manager’s Dinner,” which was quite the hot ticket and sold out in seconds. We had the pleasure of attending, and basically each distillery had a table at the event that featured the Distillery Manager from that distillery. This provided a fun focal point, for example at Kilchoman the focus is usually on the Wills family members, but at this dinner their Distillery Manager took center stage.
At one point Jackie (now at Portintruan) had each distiller get up and introduce themselves to the room, with Jackie announcing each in turn as the “Distillery Manager” except when they got to the Jura table, she introduced George Elliott as the “Head Distiller”. George is a relatively young man (noticeably younger than his peers at this dinner), and I went up to introduce myself at one point and (as tends to happen) told him about Drammers and asked if he’d be up for an online tasting with us. He immediately said yes, and so a few days later, I took the ferry over to their distillery for their festival “Open Day” and signed up for a masterclass with George, along with their Master Blender and lead whiskymaker. Of course, while we were at it, we picked up three distillery exclusives — their 2026 feis bottling, a special older/pricier expression in honor of the 40th anniversary of the festival, and a distillery exclusive.
So why did they call him the “Head Distiller” instead of the Distillery Manager? After all, George has only had the “distiller” title since June of last year and on Linked In, his title is still “Distiller” (he had previously spent 6 years as a Production Operator at Lochlea Distillery). Well, we got to the bottom of it — turns out their usual Distillery Manager (Kirsty Sligo) is out of commission recovering from a broken ankle, so George has been running the distillery solo the last 6 weeks, and apparently is doing a fine job. So, we figured, sometimes things happen for a reason — let’s do the tasting with George! And that’s exactly what we’re planning to do. Check out our lineup:
Feis Ile 40th Anniversary Distillery Exclusive Bottling - 24yo, Sauternes Cask Matured. Bottled 04.26, Cask #JAO18/548. 48.8% abv
Feis Ile - 2026 Distillery Exclusive Bottling - 16yo, Matured in an Armagnac Cask, Bottled 04.26, Cask #JUA24/1047, 55.3% abv
Distillery Exclusive Cask - 17yo, Cask #61, Distilled 6 Feb 2008, Bottled 6 September 2025. 54.9% abv
Jura 18yo
Jura 12yo
Jura Bourbon Cask
That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! The event will take place over Zoom:
Zoom Link / Meeting ID: 865 8534 2369 / Passcode: 071826
Please let us know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Charlie and Drammers Club