The first legal distillery on the Isle of Tiree will release its first whisky in early 2025, but you can put your name down for a bottle now.
The Isle of Tiree Distillery is known for its Tyree Gin which was launched in 2017, but anyone who's been tracking new Scottish distilleries will know that a whisky is due soon.
The team have released whiskies -The Cairnsmuir, a 19 year old Speyside malt and TMF10 whisky which was created to mark the Tiree Music Festival’s tenth year.
But this whisky that is the first one from the distillery.
The whisky is due out in January 2025.
Pre-orders, of which there are 400, will be available to newsletter subscribers at 11am on Tuesday 28 November.
The first release, which will be a five year old whisky, is limited to less than 1000 bottles priced at £199.99 per bottle.
It has been made using unpeated malted barley in a small oak mash tun, distilled over direct flame in small copper pot stills and matured in specially selected American Oak ex-Bourbon Quarter Casks as well as the team's first cask, a 50L Virgin Oak cask, before spending a further two years in first-fill Oloroso Sherry casks.
The result is the first expression of Tiree Whisky in over 200 years.
Ian Smith and Alain Campbell founded the Tiree whisky company in 2012 with the aim of brining back distilling to the island.
Usually seen playing the accordion in popular folk band Trail West, Ian moved back to Tiree in 2018, having spent about eight years in Glasgow, and it was this move that got him thinking of the future.
He said: “The main reason for the company was not only to provide employment for ourselves (outside of Trail West), but to also raise the profile of the island."
“Myself and my business partner are very into the local history - we love reading about the island’s written historical accounts and one of the things I discovered was that between 1790 and 1791 there were 157 people caught distilling illegally, and one in every ten was evicted from their croft or holding.
"We thought this history was fascinating - there were hundreds of years of history of whisky production on the island - and we thought, why has nobody tried to revive that?”
The distillery was built on the site of Ian's dad's builders yard, and is the island’s first legal operational distillery since the 1800s.
As well as the single malt whisky, they will also, at some point, release a single grain Scotch whisky.
Find out more on their website.
