Caol Ila distillery
Scotch whisky distillery on Islay, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, United Kingdom
Caol Ila distillery (; Scottish Gaelic: Taigh-staile Chaol Ìle [t̪ʰəˈs̪t̪alə xɯːlˈiːlə], "Sound of Islay Distillery") is a Scotch whisky distillery near Port Askaig on the isle of Islay, Scotland, owned by Diageo.
History
Caol Ila is derived from Gaelic Caol Ìle for "Sound of Islay" (lit. "Islay Strait") in reference to the distillery's location overlooking the strait between Islay and Jura. It was founded in 1846 by Hector Henderson. The distillery did not fare well, and changed hands in 1854 when Norman Buchanan, owner of the Isle of Jura Distillery, took over. In 1863 the business was acquired by Bulloch Lade & Co, of Glasgow, traders in whisky stocks.
According to the 1871 census, Duncan Johnston was the Distillery Manager at the time. Duncan was the nephew of John Johnston of Lagavulin and cousin to the Laphroaig Johnstons and so the family were involved with yet another distillery on the island.
By the 1880s over 147,000 imperial gallons (670,000 L) of whisky were produced there each year.
In 1920 Bulloch Lade went into voluntary liquidation, and a consortium of businessmen formed the Caol Ila Distillery Company Ltd.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Caol Ila distillery” as scotch whisky distillery on Islay, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q51913. Authority coordinates are 55.854, -6.109. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1846, 1854, 1863 and 1871.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caol Ila distillery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.