A DISTILLERY is leading the way in how the industry thinks about creating whisky, as its owner has managed to mix the perfect blend of heritage with sustainability.
Annabel Thomas left her job as a strategy consultant in London to return home to the West Coast to pursue her dream of changing the way the world thinks about whisky.
For Thomas, too many companies were focusing only on the traditional way of distilling and she believed not enough of them were focusing on new and innovative ways to create whisky.
In her mind the industry needed to keep moving forwards, it had to do things in “not such a traditional way” anymore if it wanted to be sustainable, a decade later Thomas’s ambition has now become a reality.
She founded Nc'nean Distillery in 2017, nestled beside the Sound of Mull in Drimnin on the Morvern peninsula, Thomas took little time to establish her business as one of the leading brands of whisky for sustainability in Scotland.
Thomas (below) explained she knew the next generation of consumers really cared about sustainability and it was not only “an opportunity”, but a problem if distilleries don’t adapt.
“The next generation of consumers will reject it, and that would be a very sad state for Scotland and for Scotch whisky,” she said.
“We tackled energy by fueling the distillery with 100% renewable energy, we tackled agriculture by sourcing organic barley, we tackled water with our cooling pond, and we tackled waste, actually in the traditional way by putting it back on the land.
“Since then, we've been kind of adding to what we do over time.”
Nc'nean was the first distillery to be verified as having net zero carbon emissions from its own operations, it is also the first to use 100% recycled clear glass bottles and is one of only two whisky distilleries in Scotland to be B Corp certified.
By the time Nc'nean launched its first whisky in 2020, Thomas found a supplier who used fully recycled instead of the industry norm of “virgin glass”, which helps reduce the carbon footprint of every bottle by 40%.
Modestly, Thomas told The National: “We're still not perfect by any means, but we're trying to do everything that we can do in the right way.”
She explained that she has found that in almost every step of running the business, the sustainable answer is almost always the more expensive and difficult one.
However, she says she has found that it always turns out to be the right one.
For example, Nc'nean uses a biomass boiler instead of an oil and gas one and they also use 100% organic Scottish barley, which Thomas says their whisky gets a “wonderful taste benefit” from.
“It adds this lovely, creamy texture to the whiskey,” Thomas said.
“There's no point in selling a sustainable whiskey if it doesn't taste great, you've got to make it taste fantastic.”
She added: “We've just generally found that doing the right thing is like karma. “It does come back in the right way somehow.”
For Thomas, her hope is to inspire the rest of the industry into making positive changes to become more sustainable at a faster rate.
But she said one of the hardest hurdles she found to overcome when establishing Nc'nean was raising money back in 2013.
She found there weren’t many investors a decade ago who were interested in doing things sustainably and couldn’t understand the business decisions of investing in things like a biomass boiler.
Another challenge for Thomas is that the cost of goods for making a bottle of whiskey is significantly more than other traditional distilleries.
“We're doing the right thing, but from a business point of view on a right now basis, it's a disadvantage,” she said.
But as Thomas says, whisky is a long game, and Nc'nean Distillery is positioned to keep pioneering the way the industry thinks about distilling whisky.
As she puts it, it’s a journey and Nc'nean is still very much at the start of its own, but it has grown from just five employees to more than double offering young people skilled jobs in their local communities.
“I want people to be happy at work, but also feel that they're contributing to something in the broader whiskey world,” she said.
In a bid to keep innovating on how they can be more sustainable Nc'nean implemented a bottle return scheme in September.
Visitors to the west coast distilleries can bring an empty bottle and get it refilled.
Customers who buy a bottle online will also receive a free-post return label to allow them to send their empty bottle back to the distillery for refilling.
Thomas said: “If it means that people think twice about throwing the next thing away, then it will have had an awesome impact.”
