Ardnahoe

Stewart Laing and his sons Andrew and Scott formed Hunter Laing & Co. in Glasgow in 2013 as blenders and bottlers, and planned from the start to make their own whisky. The family's whisky business goes back to the 1940s, when Stewart's father founded a blending and bottling firm.

The two companies' accounts differ in detail. Ardnahoe says the four-acre site by Loch Ardnahoe was found in 2015 and ground was broken late in 2016; Hunter Laing's timeline gives 2016 for the purchase and planning permission and January 2017 for the start of building. Both agree that distillation began in October 2018; cask 001 was filled on 9 November 2018. The distillery opened to the public in 2019 and released its first single malt in 2024. Stewart Hunter Laing died in 2026.

The distillery stands on a four-acre (about 1.6 ha) site above Loch Ardnahoe in north-east Islay, about two miles (3 km) up a single-track road that leaves the A846 between Keills and Port Askaig. The still room looks over the Sound of Islay. The name, according to the company, is Gaelic for "Height of the Hollow". Process water comes from Loch Ardnahoe, which the company describes as soft water filtered through peat and rock. The company calls it Islay's ninth distillery.

The malt is dried over peat smoke for about 20 hours and milled in a 100-year-old Boby mill, the only piece of old equipment in the distillery. A copper-domed mash tun feeds four Oregon pine washbacks made by JB Vats of Dufftown, where fermentation takes about 65 to 70 hours. The two lantern-shaped copper pot stills, made by Speyside Copperworks, hold 13,000 litres (wash still) and 11,000 litres (spirit still) and have long, descending lyne arms. Vapour condenses in worm tubs, coiled copper pipes in tanks of cold water, which slow the distillation. Casks are ex-bourbon American oak from the United States and Oloroso sherry casks from Jerez.

The company describes the wash as "wonderfully fruity" and the new spirit as fruity and peaty. It credits the worm tubs with added texture and complexity, and the long lyne arms with more copper contact. The first single malt was released only in 2024, so the sources say little yet about how the matured whisky develops.