Winter has finally left us up here. It has been a long one, but the spring flowers are out and the days are getting warmer. The Peat cutting season has just started, which lasts until June. Now is the time when it is dry enough to get onto our peat beds but still nice and wet which is what we want for maximum peaty smoke in our kilns! As always we still cut our peat by hand. Not just because it is the traditional way but because the peat retains more moisture when it is hand cut – the old ways are the best. I will try and post you some pictures of the guys out on our “Peat Moss”.

Feis Ile 2013

We are now busily preparing for the Island annual festival – The Feis Ile, held in last week of May.

If you would like to see our programme of special events this year you can view them here. But I have to say that once again they are all fully booked already! With this in mind we are doing as much as we can this year for all of you who cannot make it up here. We will be blogging, tweeting and Facebooking over the 3 primary days, writing and posting photographs of all the events as they happen, much of it live!

The 3 key days are Sunday 26th, Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th May when we will be hosting our Friends Gathering with a delicious roast pig and lashings of Laphroaig. And indeed drinking the last of the Laphroaig cask matured beer that we first had at last year’s Laphroaig Live in Germany. Of course Tuesday 28th May is our official open day when we will try to cover all of the special events live online including my special one when I will be tasting some of the last 40 year old with a few lucky friends!

New Packaging

Soon you will begin to notice a change in our tubes and labels in your local shops. There has been no organised change in the Laphroaig packaging for over 30 years.

Over the years each expression has had a slightly different packaging design so it has all got a little messy. We have now reworked them back into one family design. It is not a huge change- as you would expect. But the whole family looks a lot smarter now I think. Of course we researched these changes thoroughly with many Friends of Laphroaig first to make sure you liked it. So a big thanks to all of you who participated. If you cannot wait, you can see the new 10 year old design here. I hope you like it.

That’s all for now. But please do “tune in” to our Facebook or Twitter pages on our three special days as I hope it will give you a “flavour” of all the fun we have on these big days and encourage you to come next year.

Slàinte,

John Campbell
Distillery Manager, Laphroaig

Visit http://www.laphroaig.com/ to join the Friends of Laphroaig; it’s free!