Inverness’ first distillery in 130 years has officially opened.
The £7.5m Uile-bheist distillery and brewery on the River Ness, powered sustainably on site, is aiming to attract 100 tour visits per day in peak season.
Future phases will see the creation of a distilling ‘campus’, with increased capacity, a bonded warehouse with shopping, plus an enhanced tap room, tasting and visitor spaces.
Inverness, once Scotland’s malting hub, was home to the Glen Mhor, Glen Albyn and Millburn distilleries, with rare bottles still fetching high prices.
However, the distilleries were all shut in the infamous ‘whisky loch’ days of the 1980s, when global production outstripped petering demand, leading to closures across the highlands.
Uile-bheist, Gaelic for ‘monster’, is the first distillery to open in the city since 1892.
Its signature five craft ales, ready by early April, will also be the first beers brewed in Inverness for 34 years.
“Our scale is craft, not volume - our clean energy process, using shallow water wells, has been described as exemplary,” said owner Jon Erasmus, whose first application for a brewery on the current Ness bank site was knocked back in 2014.
“It’s great to bring whisky distilling and brewing back to the city but we also wanted a high level of design specification throughout, from the stills to the dramming area, to the tap room.
“If people have travelled from New York or Tokyo, or if they’ve seen a lot of other distilleries, we want them to come here and think: I really like what they’ve done here.“
Water and energy for Uile-bheist’s whisky production comes from the River Ness through a pioneering heating system, which uses shallow water wells to fire heat pumps.
Water is treated by fluorescent light, with the only grid requirement being electricity, partly provided by the glass-fronted building’s roof-top solar panels.
The production of the low carbon whisky and craft beer comes through a dual technology developed by, and imported from, German coppersmiths Kaspar Schulz.
“We are using an efficient set-up which effectively ‘shares’ the equipment up to a point in the initial process, with some subtle differences in recipe and process - thereafter the processes for the craft beer and the whisky obviously differ significantly,” said master brewer Bruce Smith, who last worked for Innis and Gunn.
“With our whisky, we are looking to forge our own path, we are not going to bind ourselves to traditions of the 1800s, we want to be a little experimental.”
Around 40 jobs will be created by Uile-bheist’s operations, in production, tours, admin and marketing and indirectly downstream.
Uile-bheist enlisted Melbourne-based illustrator Ken Taylor, who has worked with Jack White, The Pixies and Pearl Jam, to design its ‘monster’ motif.
Large-scale installations by the designer, who also created posters for films Up, Pikachu and How To Train Your Dragon, adorn the tap room and tour space walls.
“Whisky tourism has changed massively in the last five years,” said Erasmus, who hopes to attract some of the near 300,000 annual visitors to Inverness, to the distillery.
“You have Johnnie Walker on Edinburgh’s Princes Street and The Macallan investing heavily in visitor experience - it is pointless doing this unless your emphasis is on quality.”
Uile-bheist should produce between 200 and 300 casks of single malt per year, rising to 500 to 600 in development phase three.
Around 350,000 litres of craft beer a year will be produced on-site, piped directly to their visitor tap room, adjacent to the brewing floor.
A limited ‘discovery’ tour programme begins on 1 March, with an hourly tour programme starting on 1 April.
Investors can also now purchase the first limited run of 100 casks.
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