A welcoming sight!

May 9, 2021

We have thoroughly enjoyed welcoming new and familiar faces to our distillery this past week. With the easing of restrictions, we have appreciated the return of normality to an extent and our much-loved island buzz!

As the ferry sails into Castlebay and our scheduled flight lands on the beach, it is a welcoming sight to see more movement into the island and the sense of routine returning into our lives.

And whilst - in true Barra tradition - the weather remains unpredictable with an existing nip in the air, we can guarantee a warm welcome awaits you in our distillery shop.

You’ll be able to feast your eyes on our 300-litre still ‘Ada’ when you call into our shop and see her fired up, distilling a fresh batch of our multi award-winning island spirit. From our hands to your home, our Barra Atlantic Gin is distilled, bottled, packaged, and shipped from our distillery. With the help of Royal Mail and DHL Express, our shipments leave only a small carbon footprint throughout its extensive journey from Scotland’s most westerly distillery to mainland UK and beyond.

This week also brought us the pleasure of meeting some of the team from the brilliant Denham / Benn to the Isle of Barra, who were first time visitors of our island home. Flying in from Glasgow, they enjoyed the famous landing on the beach. And were fortunate that the weather held out long enough for them to be able to observe the proposed site for our new distillery. We may be biased but the views are truly stunning.

The purpose of this visit was business, although a little tour of our scenic homeland was squeezed into the schedule. Not to mention the experience of driving on Barra’s single-track roads on every outing, which can be a little shock to driving on the mainland. The team from Denham / Benn visited the site of our proposed Whisky & Gin distillery and got a feel for the location of our planned extension. From here, they are able to push forward and get the ball rolling on the next step of our journey, which we’ll be able to share with you in due course.

Our proposed distillery will house a one-tonne single malt installation and re-home our existing 300 litre gin still “Ada” with all necessary plans for bottling and bonded warehousing.

Along with the production facilities to produce over 300,000 bottles of single malt, our distillery will also include a visitor centre incorporating a retail area, information centre, café/bar area that will welcome families into our unique distillery story. We believe this is key to building a community environment welcoming both local residents as well as tourists. It is important to us that the local community are supportive of our venture, so that they too can join us on our journey.

Alan Winchester will be advising and overseeing the team with 43 years’ service to the whisky industry behind him, working for some of the most famous whisky distilleries in the world, he has continually pushed the boundaries within the industry. Alan has a Fellowship from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in Scotland and leads unique and immersive tastings at each year’s Spirit of Speyside Festival.

For our customers to have the knowledge that they will be investing in a cask that has been made with the guidance from Alan, is a huge bonus. For investors, they have the knowledge that the company has someone of this calibre guiding us through the early stages, to teach us how to create a whisky worthy of the land and our home.

We are honoured to have someone with so much respect within the industry to help guide us through the process of making a truly remarkable single malt right here on the Isle of Barra.