Distiller gets into spirit and turns over a new Leaf

But, it turns out, Mark Reynier’s motor is no one-off prototype modified ethanol guzzler. It’s the all-electric Nissan Leaf, on sale now from £26,000.

So how does that work? How’s he getting electricity from whisky? And how does an electric car cope with the wind-battered machairs and rustic roads of the Hebrides, compared to its apparent comfort zone on the well-tended, flat roads within the city limits?

Fortunately, in the world of motoring journalism, you’re never left wondering anything long before a car company eagerly whisks you off somewhere to find out all the answers and more.

So it was that Nissan deposited a small group of motoring journalists at Islay Airport with a (surely the obvious collective noun) pile of Leafs waiting in the car park, with route maps on the passenger seats and the tanks full of eager little electrons.

Nissan is keen to emphasise that the Leaf doesn’t necessarily have to be a city car. The company says that anyone who drives up to 80 miles per day shouldn’t have any problems. Islay’s only 25 miles long and 20 miles wide, so unless you’re particularly forgetful, disorganised or, um, lost on your daily errands, you’re not going to stretch its range too much.

But stretch it we did. With unforgiving Atlantic winds buffeting the car, some embarrassingly bad navigating by my co-pilot and me, our 60-mile tour of Islay was cruelly cut short at about 50 miles, before we could sample the delights of Craigens Oyster Farm, which was originally planned on our schedule. However, rather than risk running out of juice in the middle of nowhere, we took a shortcut with our charge cable euphemistically tucked between our legs.

At least there was free electricity (and not a little whisky) on tap here. In fitting with his eco-friendly, waste-not-want-not outlook on life, distillery owner Mark Reynier has eschewed some of the most expensive petrol in the UK and installed an ingenious system for generating electricity from the whisky-making process.

While the used barley – the draff – is fed to local cattle, whose slurry is spread on local farmers’ fields (which in turn produce more barley), the pot ale – the water in which the barley has been steeping – is pumped into a large biowaste drum.

In here, hungry microbes feed off the waste, producing methane, which is captured in another tank and used to run an electricity generator. So the power Reynier uses to charge up his Leaf is not only free, it’s about as eco-friendly as it gets… although there’s a bit of reverse carbon offsetting going on here, courtesy of Mrs Reynier’s Porsche Cayenne.

Those of us who don’t have our own whisky distillery to hand can still fully charge the Leaf for the price of a cheap dram – about two quid a night – and enjoy smug reminders of how well we’re doing from the car itself. The more green your driving, the quicker you can grow a little electronic tree on the dash. The more trees you grow, the better a human being you are, presumably. You can even upload your stats to the Nissan website and see how your eco-driving matches up against drivers around the world.

The problem with eco driving, however, is that it ain’t much fun – few worthy activities are. The Leaf does have an enjoyable amount of poke and manoeuvrability in normal mode. But in Eco mode it drives (rather fittingly, perhaps) like a melting polar ice cap.

With Eco disengaged, the Leaf’s 80kW of power and 280Nm of torque, along with its top speed of 90mph are useful enough. But while other cars may get the adrenaline flowing by virtue of tyre-squealing acceleration or seat-of-the-pants handling, thrills in the Leaf can be derived by simply switching on the fan to clear the windscreen and watching in horror as your projected range plummets by 15-odd miles.

A few hours in the Leaf, especially when the miles left on your route and the miles left in the battery are on a crash course, can inspire a distinctly West-of-Scotland Calvinist driving style. Air con? Music? Windscreen wipers? Headlights? The Devil’s works, sir!

But maybe a little of that ideology isn’t such a bad thing these days. With the price of petrol and diesel ever soaring, how long will it be before all drivers think like this? Driving a Leaf towards the limits of its range really rams home the concept that energy has to come from somewhere and is a valuable commodity.

Driving well within its range, however, the Leaf is a perfectly good runabout that perhaps offers a glimpse of the future of motoring and certainly offers untouchably cheap running costs. And as many a recently-bereaved Islayean (it’s Ileach, you oik! – Motoring Ed) grouse will testify, its deadly silent engine can easily provide the added bonus of an unsuspecting free bird for the pot.