Port Ellen

Port Ellen was licensed on Islay's south coast in 1825 and shaped in the mid-19th century by John Ramsay, one of the first Scottish distillers to ship whisky in volume to the United States. The distillery also served as a test bed for early spirit-safe technology, which is why its name appears in the history of Scotch measurement and excise as often as in tasting notes.

After a long silent period between the wars, production restarted in 1967 and ran until the 1983 downturn, when Islay simply had more capacity than blenders needed. The stills went, but the site never fell quiet: the Port Ellen maltings, built in 1973, kept malting barley for distilleries across the island and still does. In 2024 Diageo reopened the distillery with two pairs of stills — one pair rebuilt to the 1983 specification, the other for experimental work — as part of the same programme that revived Brora.