Our journey with sustainable agriculture began early on with organic barley first distilled in 2003, Islay barley first harvested in 2004, and biodynamic barley in 2010. With the aim of decreasing our carbon footprint and increasing our support of sustainable practices, we then began exploring regenerative agriculture locally.
Terroir has been a driving force for us since our resurrection in 2001, so it was a natural progression to explore sustainable practices at home on Islay. In 2016, Production Director, Allan Logan, and long-standing farming partner, Andrew Jones, had a conversation about planting rye as a rotational crop on his fields at Coull Farm to encourage soil health. Jones was keen to reduce his reliance upon chemical fertilisers and pesticides and diversify his crops. Rye is known to help with weed suppression, nutrient cycling, and sequestering excess nitrogen. It’s also an excellent choice for its deep root system which helps to drain and aerate the soil – a great benefit on Islay where soils can suffer from compaction due to heavy rainfall.
The challenge for a farmer, of course, is in having a sure market for what they grow. To lessen the risk Jones was taking, Bruichladdich Distillery offered to cover Jones’s costs of planting an untrialed grain – and to buy the crop to make a new whisky should it succeed.
And thus the first ever Islay rye whisky was born. “The actual thinking behind The Regeneration Project goes beyond whisky alone,” Logan says. “Yes, it’s an incredible liquid. But it’s also about the regeneration of the soil, reducing input on the farm, looking after the land and the environment, and supporting our farming partners on Islay. It’s a project which really starts to get you thinking about the whisky and how it’s been made.”
Head Distillery Adam Hannett recounts his experience of seeing the physical benefits of Jones’s use of rye during the recent filming of B Lab’s Common Good series at Coull Farm:
“We stood looking across the land and you could see the big puddles sitting on the fields. That’s weight. That’s compression. The field that had the rye in it, however, there was no standing water in it – the roots were aerating the soil and allowing for drainage.”
“It’s working well,” Jones tells us. “When it comes to crop rotation, it didn’t get any weedkiller, and it didn’t get any fungicide – it seems to suppress all the problems you tend to get with growing barley. Rye is deeper rooted as well, so it seems to be aiding drainage. We’ve also noticed that the barley following straight after the rye has always been the best crop on the farm. We thought it was a coincidence at first, but it happens each time, so it’s definitely doing some sort of good.”