Islay Mist was first blended in 1927 by D. Johnston & Co., proprietors of Laphroaig distillery, to mark the twenty-first birthday of the Laird of Margadale — Lord Margadale being the owner of the Islay House estate on which Laphroaig then stood. The story runs that the guests found a pure Laphroaig too much for them, and so Ian Hunter, then running the distillery, softened the heavy Islay malt with Speyside components to produce something more hospitable.
The blend proved popular enough to be kept in production, and it is one of the genuinely old named blends still on the shelf. Today Islay Mist is owned by MacDuff International of Glasgow, which also holds Lauder's. The 8 Year Old remains the core expression, with Laphroaig still the defining malt.
It is a smoky blend in the proper sense — not a whisper of peat but a clear declaration, tempered rather than buried by the Speyside malts. For anyone who likes their Islay but is unwilling to pay single malt prices, this is a sensible and historically interesting dram.
