The time during which the Edinburgh fringe festival is on – just under a month, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, of non-stop madness (there are some 2,500 different shows, most of which run 6 days a week, and an endless number of visitors) – is both knackering and invigorating, fun and soul-destroying, not to mention ridden with borderline alcohol abuse for the vast majority of its visitors; residents included. Indeed, I have only experienced sleep paralysis (where you become ‘aware’ before your REM cycle has finished, thus you’re paralysed and hallucinate) twice and both times were during the festival – it can be caused by sleep deprivation and excessive alcohol consumption, you see, the two hallmarks of a good fringe festival.

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I was just about to state that this is the youngest distillery I have written about so far, as it was founded in 1995, but that would actually be a lie. It is, in fact, 4 years the senior of Mackmyra. It is the youngest Scottish distillery I’ve written about, however, and in my opinion that is enough to make it quite interesting!  It is also the only distillery on the Isle of Arran – no points for guessing which distillery I am talking about now, it is, of course, Arran.

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Yet another distillery owned by the fairly well known and decently large corporation that is Diageo, Talisker is the only distillery on the Isle of Skye and was originally founded in 1830. The first Talisker distillery was built in 1831, however it has since been completely rebuilt after it was lost in a fire in 1960. Exact replicas of the original stills were built for the new distillery in an effort to preserve the unique Talisker flavour, and so far as I could tell you, they’ve succeeded rather well.

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