As a business, we strongly believe in the importance of sharing our stories, experiences and talking you through our developments as we journey. We’re proud of our heritage and our surroundings and want to share as much as we can with you.

Let’s start at the very beginning. Did you know that the Isle of Barra Distillers is a family run business? Owners Michael & Katie Morrison are both locals of our island home and are a married team. From scratch, they built and developed the Isle of Barra Distillers company to what it is today. Both having moved away from Barra after school to further their education in the city of Glasgow, they sought to return home, start a family and well…the Isle of Barra Distillers company. This is where the gin journey began.

 
Did you know the Isle of Barra Distillers is the first distillery to open on the Isle of Barra itself? Not only that, it’s Scotland’s most westerly distillery and also the first in the Western Isles to home a copper still custom built and fitted by the world-renowned Forsyth’s. 

To begin with, the distillery was home to a small but mighty 50 litre still. From here each bottle of gin was labelled, filled, capped and boxed by hand. 

Currently, the distillery is home to a spectacular 300 litre still, named Ada. From here each bottle of gin is now labelled and filled by machine. The corking and boxing of the bottles remain by hand.

 
Did you know from 2019 to 2020, the Isle of Barra Distillers team doubled in size? From just 3 team members to 6 in the space of one year, the team is slowly but surely growing in numbers.

Now let’s talk about our key botanical, carrageen seaweed. Did you know that this very type of seaweed was chosen as the key botanical for our Barra Atlantic Gin for a very sentimental reason? As carrageen seaweed is rich in minerals and antioxidants it was used by Michael's mum to make carrageen pudding for him and his brothers when they were children. As carrageen is a natural gelatine, it would create the perfect panna cotta style pudding with great health benefits. 

But that’s not all we have on carrageen seaweed. There is an abundance around our island home allowing it to be easily and naturally obtained. All of the carrageen collected for our island spirit is harvested by hand and only a small percentage each time is taken from one location allowing it to be sustainable.

Did you know that our key botanical can only be harvested after the spring tide, when the sea if furthest from the shore? It’s as seasonal as it gets.

We’re also pleased to report that our chosen method of delivery enables our shipments to leave only a small carbon footprint throughout its extensive journey from us to you. As our mail travels via road, ferry and flight we utilise existing methods of public transport links to have our mail travel to the mainland and beyond.

 And there you have it, a few facts on the Isle of Barra Distillers company for now. We’ll enjoy revisiting this in the future with more tales, facts and information for you. 

 
A polite reminder that we can now ship our Barra Atlantic Gin worldwide with courier DHL Express. If you’d like to share the Isle of Barra with a friend or family member out of reach, simply select your bottle and allow our website to calculate the shipping cost at checkout.

 

Isle of Barra Distillers