Laphroaig is not a whisky one encounters passively. It announces itself with the decorum of a sea-swept doctor’s bag set ablaze in a peat bog. Pungent, medicinal, smoky, and unflinchingly individual. Loved or loathed, it is rarely misunderstood.

Established in 1815 by the Johnston brothers, the distillery clings to Islay’s southern coast, where Atlantic winds and ancestral peat combine to craft something utterly distinctive. Yet for all its fame, much of Laphroaig’s enduring character is owed to one remarkable woman: Bessie Williamson. Beginning as a shorthand typist in the 1930s, she rose through the ranks to become manager and eventually owner, the first woman to manage a Scotch distillery in the 20th century. Her stewardship during and after the war years preserved not only Laphroaig’s operations but its soul, and her influence still echoes in its spirit.

Laphroaig continues to malt a portion of its own barley on-site, peat-smoked in the old kiln to levels that border on the theatrical. The stills, short and stout, coax a heavy, oily spirit rich with iodine, creosote, and kelp. Ex-bourbon casks do most of the ageing, often within stone warehouses a stone’s throw from the sea, where the salt-laden air plays its alchemical role.

This is not a dram for the faint of heart, but for the adventurous, and for those who believe whisky should not merely warm the cockles but raise the very dead. Laphroaig is Islay at its most elemental, and all the more glorious for it.