The Queen of Spirits

At the furthest end of one of northwest Scotland’s remotest peninsulas, a quiet revolution has been unfolding – and it’s one that’s helping to rethink, and reshape, one of the country’s most cherished industries (not to mention pastimes).

For centuries, Scotland’s whisky distillers have, bar a tweak here and there, pretty much done things the way they always have. If it ain’t broke, the prevailing philosophy seemed to imply, why fix it?

For Annabel Thomas who, seven years ago, set up the Nc’Nean distillery in the far west of the Morvern peninsula, change wasn’t just overdue, it was essential if the industry itself was to survive.

“Growing up in Scotland, the whisky industry is hard to avoid,” she says. “It’s something that I was always interested in, but not necessarily something I enjoyed consuming. Whisky felt like it was for other people,” she pauses. “Men, mostly.”

As Annabel explains, the industry’s weathered many changes over its 500-or-so year history, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that single malt whiskies (from a single distillery, rather than the blends that had, until then, represented 90% of the market) saw the spirit reach global audiences.

Its most famous distilleries were snapped up by international brands, as prices for rare single malts skyrocketed.

“The drink was marketed as the kind of evening dram that upwardly mobile men would drink by the fire, or at their club,” Annabel says. “It felt exclusive, rarified and reserved for special occasions. You’d seldom see a woman drinking it in any of their adverts.”

For Annabel, whose parents farmed the land of their remote Drimnin estate, that wasn’t the whisky she knew. Nor was it the whisky she was particularly interested in distilling.

She says: “My parents had been thinking about setting up a distillery for a while, so I took a sabbatical from my strategy consultancy job in London to write a business proposal to see whether there was space for a new kind of whisky.”

Six months later, Annabel’s research revealed a sobering account of an industry as disconnected from the place it was created as it was possible to be. “It was through this process of exploring, listening and learning about the industry that I got a strong feeling there was a need to do something different,” she says.

“None of the distilleries were thinking about sustainability,” Annabel recalls. “They were doing things the way they’d always done them. They’d done a brilliant job of marketing how and when you should drink it, but when it came to how it was made, the industry was stuck.”

“It made sense to me that this change had to come from a new brand,” Annabel says, “and that the story had to start with the place. The whisky had to exist in harmony with the environment it came from.”

After leaving her London job in 2013, Annabel spent four years raising funds and building the distillery from the ground up on the shores of the Sound of Mull. “When we started it was me and five others, four women and a man,” Annabel recalls. “Now we’ve a team of 22, and we’re evenly split. That diversity is so important. Not just in gender, but in experience and age. It brings freshness of thought, challenge, and a willingness to try something new.”

Nc’Nean started distilling its first (organic) whisky in 2017 and, three years later, its bottling was born – beautifully etched with native wildflowers. In those three years, the distillery radically reinvented almost the entire distilling process – while keeping to the essential whisky recipe of just malted barley, yeast and water.

“Sustainability has always been important,” Annabel says. “Reducing carbon emissions, reusing glass for the bottles, these are the things the industry needs to be mindful of if it’s to have a future.”

Leading by example, Nc’Nean swiftly achieved B Corp certified status for its commitment to social and environmental responsibility. “I’d never heard of B Corp,” Annabel admits, “but when I read their evaluation process I felt like it was written for us!”

The first – and still only – distillery to use 100% recycled glass, Nc’Nean diverts 99.97% of its waste from landfill. “We’re the first whisky distillery to be verified as net zero carbon emissions for scopes 1 and 2,” Annabel says.

More than its impressive environmental chops, and more, even, than the way Nc’Nean is encouraging the global brands who are its competition to take their environmental responsibilities seriously, Annabel is especially proud of the way her whisky is embedded in the tenacious local community.

“Part of the motivation for my dad was creating jobs in this remote area, so seeing the impact on our neighbours is amazing,” Annabel says. “One of the most important things here is the school. If you lose that you lose everything – so bringing in that next generation, and creating something that can thrive and co-exist in this beautiful landscape – that’s so amazing.”

Images courtesy of Nc’Nean and Maik Ahlers.