I hope this letter finds you well; we’ve had a very momentous landmark here at Laphroaig recently – we have reached over 500,000 Friends of Laphroaig.

A special hello to Jarmo Maenpaa from Finland who is our 500,000th Friend of Laphroaig!  We started our “little” club of followers 18 years ago, with the first friends braving the weather to plant their country flags on their square foot plot of land. We certainly had no idea back then that it would embrace lovers of Laphroaig from over 180 countries around the World. We are marking this momentous occasion with a special square foot of copper, made from an old still which we replaced last year. Once laid, I will post a photo of us placing the copper plaque on the exact square foot on Facebook. It will then be engraved and placed on the wall in our new museum for all to see.

We have also used this occasion to expand the original area for plots, as we were running out of land! The last time we had to expand our space was into a wooded area, which was not ideal. So, we now have an expanded area to be used for the Friends plots, which will allow us to move some friends out of the woods, so everybody now has an accessible plot. Furthermore, it has allowed us to take exact coordinates of every single plot. This means (with the help of a hand held GPS device we have bought) that when you visit us, you will be able to stand on your exact piece of Laphroaig land and perhaps enjoy your “rent” of a dram of our finest!

If you go to our website http://laphroaig.createsend1.com/t/r-l-dkmhyy-miyuyjjhk-j/ you will be able to see the new plot area and the exact location of your plot with coordinates.

FOL 18th Birthday

I mentioned that this year is our 18th Year of Friends of Laphroaig. We are celebrating this special birthday in a way that we hope will involve all of you, I will be writing to you about this in more detail in a few weeks. In the meantime, in preparation for our birthday celebrations I’d like to ask any of you who have any photos of the distillery from over the last 18 years to send them into us at info@laphroaig.com as we want to use some of them as part of our Friends of Laphroaig display. Be sure to include your full name and plot number so we can add that too.

USA Tour

I have just returned from my tour of the USA. Over the 2 weeks I had the pleasure to meet many Friends of Laphroaig. May I take this opportunity to thank all of you for the fantastic kindness and hospitality I received everywhere I went.

Feis Ile

Many of you have been asking about this year’s Laphroaig Open Day. It is to be held on 29th May. We have a full schedule of events taking place and will be posting as much as we can on our Facebook site during the whole week. Full details of this year’s events are on the website and also on Facebook. I am afraid most of our special events are now sold out. However, some of our new expanded distillery tours will continue throughout the year, so if you are planning to come and visit us do check them out.

That’s all my news for now. I will write to you shortly concerning our special 18th Birthday competition.

Slàinte,

John Campbell
Distillery Manager, Laphroaig

For more information about becoming a Friend of Laphroaig visit www.laphroaig.com