Bunnahabhain 12 years — which means ‘mouth of the river’ in Gaelic, as it stands at the mouth of the Margadale Spring on the shores of the Sound of Islay — first came into existence in 1883. However its origins can be traced back four years earlier when, in 1879, William Robertson of Robertson and Baxter Blending House, joined with the Greenlees Brothers to create the Islay Distillery Company. And so, with the distillery built on a site close to the Margadale River, in 1883 Bunnahabhain was born.