Lucci’s Whisky Bar, Bowmore.
Islay hardly needs an introduction to whisky curious folk.
In spite of this, the island’s main town of Bowmore has a curious past that’s steeped in whisky history…
The original village was founded in 1768, by Daniel Campbell of Shawfield and Islay.
Campbell, a wealthy Glasgow merchant and member of parliament, who had amassed a fortune through dealings in the tobacco and slave trade, purchased Islay and Jura in 1727. This was not long after he was paid a handsome compensation by the city of Glasgow due to the destruction of his property during the infamous malt riots of 1725. He had voted in favour of the controversial malt tax which sparked violent disorder in the city resulting in death, destruction and irreparable damage to his city centre home.
Following the riots the government made concessions on the tax, effectively paving the way for the legal distilling industry we know today. As owner of Islay, as well as establishing the planned village of Bowmore, Campbell encouraged the cultivation of barley as well as the legal production of whisky on the island.
Fast forward 250 odd years or so and we find ourselves in the picturesque harbour town on a summer’s evening as the sun sets over Loch Indaal. With all this whisky history on our mind there’s only one place we’re heading and that’s Lucci’s Whisky Bar. If you’ve met Peter Alexander Maclellan previously, chances are you wont forget him. A master of traditional hospitality, he’s a gracious host and always on hand to provide a genuine warm welcome to Lucci’s and the Bowmore Hotel.
It’s hard to do justice visually to the amount of whisky on offer at the bar . With something in the region of 1800 bottles it must be amongst the largest, if not thee largest Islay collection in the world. If a bottle has been released by an Islay distillery, chances are Peter’s got it. Open, or ready to be opened. Waiting to be shared. Yet, Lucci’s may well be something of a hidden gem. A pretty, if unassuming hotel from the outside. A public bar on one side and an Islay malt lovers paradise on the other.
After an evening of fine Islay hospitality we sat down the next day for a dram with the man himself to find out a little bit more…
RB: Hi Peter! Tell us a bit about your involvement with the Bowmore Hotel.
PM: Of course! My father bought the Bowmore Hotel in 1984. Back then it wasn’t known as a whisky bar and the two bars were actually completely separate with no internal connection (The Bowmore hotel was two bar areas…one operates as a public bar and the other as the whisky bar / restaurant). It wasn’t until around 20 years ago we really started looking at the whisky side of things. My father hates whisky! He’s a wine and prosecco drinker. He’d always say ‘Peter, don’t open all these bottles, this won’t work’. I think he’s as shocked as I am now that it has worked! He can’t really believe the bar is the way it is. It’s one of those old truths though isn’t it? If you don’t have the product you can’t sell it. With our clientele, there’s a lot of people who might own one of these bottles but they won’t open them, so we grew the bar with that in mind. All these bottles are for opening and drinking.
For anybody that’s been to Luccis’s many years ago…it was always knows as Lucci’s long before the whisky bar became a thing and that’s due to my father’s nickname. Way back it was like Islay’s nightclub…flashing lights, loud music. That was what the era needed, what the young folk on Islay needed. It was good back then but a lot has changed so we knew we needed to evolve. I remember a customer from Sweden being completely confused that the two bars were part of the same establishment. We invested a lot in the whisky bar and the hotel, all the while slowly evolving the bar so that it didn’t cut anybody off. We really care about our locals and it’s important that we find a balance to suit everybody.
RB: When you decided to focus on whisky was the plan always to have such a comprehensive official bottle Islay only selection?
PM: That only really happened around five years ago. Prior to that I had Indie bottles, non-Islay bottles, Japanese bottles, a bit of everything. Friends from all over the world would always be bringing bottles as gifts. I had a bit of a light bulb moment with the Kinship bottles from Ardnahoe. There was a 40 year old Caol Ila, independently bottled by Hunter Laing. It was an expensive bottle so it was up on the bar and one day a customer comes in and asks how much it is for a dram. I told him £100. He was a bit hesitant so asked how much the 35 year old official bottling we had was. When I told him £70 he said ‘great I’ll take a dram’. It really made me think…people come from so far afield to this wee island, they spend a lot of money to get here, accommodation, food transport, everything else…why would I give them anything else other than the official whiskies of Islay or Jura.
I said to my dad ‘I’m going to take all the indie Islay’s, everything else off the bar’. He was dismayed! He said ‘what are you going to do with it all?’, I said ‘Put it in whisky sauces!’ I didn’t really put it in sauces but kept it and give it to friends and returning customers from all over the world…
…There’s actually a Belgian chap, his name’s Mark Vrankan, you could probably blame him for all this whisky! When I was 23 I still hadn’t found an Islay whisky that I really loved. This is despite living on Islay, being born on Islay! He came in after an Ardbeg open day when the committee genuinely was a small committee of people and poured me three drams blind. They’d had a barbecue where it was bring your own bottles to share. He pours me these three drams out brown paper bags and disappears away up the stairs. A wee while later when the bar’s a bit quieter he comes down with the bottles and asks me which was my favourite. One was a 25 year old Lord of the Isles, another was a 1972 single cask. The one I liked was the 1998 9 year old Renaissance! That, to this day is still my favourite whisky. That was the one that really made me go ‘Right, I understand this. I understand why people come here.’
The original idea when we went exclusively official Islay was to be able to offer customers 100 drams from each distillery. 100 Lagavulin’s, 100 Laphroaigs etc etc. We’ve now got over 200 odd Bowmore’s by the dram, there’s nearly 200 Kilchoman’s by the dram. Long story short, we have a problem!
You know, we live on a wee island and we’re kept busy doing what we do. We get people visiting us now who’ve been to a lot of whisky bars around the world and maybe in particular places like the US, Japan, Asia, and they’re still amazed by what we have here in terms of open bottles from one region.
RB: The whisky landscape on Islay and more generally has changed massively since you started growing the collection. How has that affected the business?
PM: Well we need to make more shelves is one thing!
There are more distilleries appearing on Islay year on year. Distilleries close at 5pm. Everyone that comes to visit a distillery on Islay needs somewhere to eat, somewhere to stay… There needs to be a good balance. There’s a lot of hospitality businesses on the island that aren’t able to do the numbers they used to as staffing is a real issue. Hospitality and distilleries have to go hand in hand. If it wasn’t for the distilleries and the whisky we wouldn’t be here. The bar wouldn’t be what it is. We rely on international customers from all over so it’s important to us that we’re able to give them that good Islay welcome and really look after people.
I’m a big believer that in businesses like ours you need to put yourself out there and be on the floor. If you make a personal connection with people it really makes a big difference. A lot of the distilleries have a certain generation of staff that are retiring now. Pinky up at Lagavulin, (Iain Mcarthur, the legendary Lagavulin warehouse manager who recently retired after 53 years service) people would come here just to see him. They go up to Bunnahabhain to see David Brodie, Mary at Bruichladdich, Jackie at Ardbeg, David Turner at Bowmore. These people have all been great to me and have helped this place to grow.
I’ve also made a lot of good relationships with guys all over the world and they help me out in getting bottles that I wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. China, the US, Germany etc. I always make it clear that these bottles are to be opened for the bar and that’s really important.
RB: Visiting Islay can be a real pilgrimage for people. Is this something you enjoy being a part of?
PM: Definitely.
A lot of jobs you don’t get the satisfaction of someone coming and telling you ‘You’ve made our day’ but we do get that. We had some folks who were only over for a day and they had come solely because they wanted to go to Lagavulin. They had ferry issues getting here and for whatever reason Lagavulin was shut that day. They struggled to find somewhere to eat as everywhere was busy but eventually found themselves here for dinner…we’ve got more bottles of Lagavulin here than Lagavulin do at the distillery so they left that night vowing to be back and to stay at the hotel next time as well.
A lot of folk come as guests and leave as friends. It makes you feel that what you’re doing is worthwhile. Since the covid pandemic things have been hard for hospitality and workers within hospitality but it’s so important to care about the customer and that’s what we do, care about looking after people.
Islay’s great at welcoming people in. It’s not an easy place to get to so when you get here you want to feel welcome. It’s a bit like Port Ellen…I’m not sure with the expensive tours and the exclusive access that’s the right way to go for Islay. I mean we’ve got folk who tell us they’ll keep coming to Islay every year for the people, the atmosphere, the hospitality but they’re slowing down on buying the bottles as things have got too expensive. These folk aren’t daft, they can remember buying Black Bowmore for £95.99 in 1992!
RB: Favourite whisky place outside of Lucci’s?
PM: The Pot Still in Glasgow is a great whisky pub. Really cosy, nice clientele, a really nice feel about it and plenty of choice of whisky for sure. The Balmoral in Edinburgh is really nice. We’ve still not made it to the Tipsy Midge, which is a great name, but we’ve heard it’s meant to be really good so we’re going to try and check that out. Where else…what’s the place with the hoop of destiny again?
RB: Oh, Teuchters Landing?
PM: Thats the one! Great bar and great fun. It was Keith from Rabbies took us there. He took us to seven whisky bars in Edinburgh when we were through!
RB: Some drams that hold a special significance to you and the pub?
PM: The 1963 Bunna which I’ve replaced a few times. That was my first big bottle I opened. That hold’s a special place as it’s when I started opening all the bottles. There’s nothing safe in this bar. If you see a bottle and it’s not opened yet, it can be opened.
Another which is a unicorn is the 1964 Black Bowmore. I’m desperate to get one of them back on the bar. I do get asked about it a lot and I do say to people ‘you realise if I had that it’s going to be very, very expensive’ and they’re like ‘yeah, yeah, no problem!’
I’ve got to mention the 1998 Ardbeg Renaissance again as that was definitely the dram that made me fall in love with whisky. If it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t be sitting here now. As I said, my father hates whisky as does my mother, so yeah, it’s got a lot to answer for!
RB: An easy one to finish on. Favourite Islay distillery?
PM: Ooof that’s a tough one. Ehh, I’d need to go between two, Bowmore and Bunnahabhain. Or if it was three then Ardbeg.
RB: Like we said, an easy one!
PM: Bruichladdich’s another too. Ahhh, it’s too difficult. All the distilleries are so good to us. Without the distilleries we’re not here. At the same time we’re helping to promote them too. At Feis we’ll buy everything that’s available so that we can put it on the bar for people to try a dram here and if they like it they can buy a bottle from the distillery, I think the distilleries recognise that, so that’s nice.The whisky side of things is what has kept me in this game. I love it.
RB: Thanks for your time Peter! A fascinating insight into another brilliant whisky place. We couldn’t recommend Lucci’s any higher. An absolute must visit if on Islay!
Cheers!
