100% ISlay

Kilchoman is a family run business established by Anthony and Kathy Wills in 2005.  As the business expanded, the husband and wife team were joined by their three sons; James, George and Peter.  The Wills family remain the driving force behind Kilchoman with Anthony as Managing Director and Master Distiller, Kathy running the Visitor Centre and their three sons managing the distillery’s sales and marketing activities.

The 100% Islay philosophy stems from Anthony and Kathy’s desire to resurrect the grass roots tradition of farm distilling.  From the very beginning, the 100% Islay range was the main reason for being.  It represents the revival of single malt whisky being cultivated from barley to bottle in a single location.  This is a distillery where the responsibility for quality and consistency is not outsourced but completed on-site with skill, care and attention to detail.

Kilchoman farms a variety of landscapes covering an area of 2,300 acres surrounding the ruined Kilchoman Church.  The craggy hill ground to its south is grazed by our flock of blackface sheep.  To the west, its herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle feed on a combination of machair grasses and draff; barley husks discarded during the whisky-making process.

Kilchoman’s most fertile ground, 400 acres of rich soil surrounding the distillery, is reserved for its annual barley crop.  Sown each spring, once Islay’s 50,000 migratory geese have departed, the barley ripens over the summer months before being harvested in early autumn.

Harvest time represents the start of the whisky-making process which sees Kilchoman’s own grown barley malted, distilled, matured and bottled at the distillery, eventually becoming Islay’s only Single Farm Single Malt Scotch Whisky.