Cask and Still Magazine | 21 >>>
ARBIKIE HIGHLAND ESTATE, ANGUS IAIN STIRLING, FOUNDER & DIRECTOR
I’m working with my two brothers, David and John. We were looking at where we could source a spirit for potential clients and the light bulb went on – why don’t we start distilling? We’re all whisky drinkers, so it was a given. The idea quickly mushroomed into where we’ve got to now. We’ve come to market very quickly – it took about two years to get
up and running and we started selling in November. We have a vodka in market, a gin about to come to market, and we’re in the process of starting to distil whisky. It’s an independently-funded family business which allowed us the
freedom to build very quickly. Because we weren’t looking for funding, we didn’t really need to publicise what we were doing so it’s a slightly different approach to the whole business. We’re fortunate in that our business is built on our family farm at Lunan Bay, so we’ve got all the crops and we already had a site. The distillery is in a converted barn, so we had to refurbish rather than build. There were some issues with getting the kit, but we solved those quite rapidly. I worked in the drinks business for 15 years with Diageo,
Whyte & Mackay and Jim Beam, so I bring the drinks marketing expertise. It helps if you have those
expertise already in house, although it’s a heck of a lot harder doing your own brands than it is someone else’s. My older brother John runs the farm,
so we’re growing our own crops. Just about everything we use from start to fi nish will be grown on the farm, so the provenance is truly there. Plus, we like to innovate and have been working with Heriot-Watt’s world-class Institute of Brewing and Distilling. It’s fantastic to have such remarkable expertise on our doorstep. We’ve positioned our business in the super
We’ve positioned
our business in the super premium spirits space
premium spirits space, so it’s very much an export business in my view. John has previously worked overseas, David lives in Connecticut and our other brother Sandy lives in Dubai, so we’ve got a bit of a family spread. Having people in the market and getting out there on planes and wearing out some shoe leather is incredibly important; we’re listening to potential customers and giving them what they want, rather than us doing what we think is right. We will eventually have a
visitor centre. Angus is pretty undiscovered and the new V&A in Dundee potentially creates the footfall for us. We’ll take our time with that though. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
www.arbikie.com
EDEN MILL, ST ANDREWS PAUL MILLER, FOUNDER & OWNER
Arbikie is a family affair for Iain Stirling.
My distillery is three miles west of St Andrews in Guardbridge. We’ve been making beer there since 2012 and we set up the distillery side in November 2014. We are the only company in Scotland making beer and whisky on the same site. This links to the history of the site, which was Haig’s Distillery from 1810-1869. They started as a distillery then moved into brewing. We only discovered this when a lovely old gentleman wearing a cravat, monocle, mustard cords and a Barbour jacket stepped out of his 1933 vintage Rolls Royce and walked down the
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