Isle of Raasay

Bill Dobbie and Alasdair Day met in 2013 and formed R&B Distillers, with the aim, in their words, of building Scotland's leading artisanal distiller. Companies House shows the company incorporated in July 2014 under the name Canny Distillers. By 2015 they had chosen Raasay, and in 2016 they gained planning permission to turn the nineteenth-century Borodale House into a distillery, visitor centre and accommodation.

The first legal distillation on the island took place on 14 September 2017; the company says Raasay has a long history of illicit distilling. Its first product was a gin, which the company calls the first legal spirit from Raasay. The distillery employs more than 25 people on an island the company puts at 161 residents.

Raasay lies off the west coast in the Inner Hebrides, about 25 minutes by ferry from Skye. The distillery stands at Borodale House near the pier at Inverarish, in the Highland region. Water comes from an on-site well, Tobar na Ba Baine (the Well of the Pale Cow), which the company says flows over volcanic rock and through Jurassic sandstone. Local peat and island barley are used for some special releases.

Every drop is distilled, matured and bottled on the island. Fermentations last up to 118 hours, about five days, which the company credits with blackberry notes in the new spirit. For its signature single malt, the Na Sia recipe, peated and unpeated spirit are matured separately in three kinds of cask (first-fill rye whiskey casks, new Chinkapin oak and first-fill Bordeaux red wine casks), six combinations in all. The core whisky is bottled at 46.4% ABV without chill-filtration and with natural colour; single casks are bottled at full strength. Still details are not in the sources opened.

The founders took as their model older Hebridean single malts whose style, they say, has become rare: a lightly peated whisky balanced by rich dark fruit. The company describes its signature single malt in those terms and its single casks with notes such as dried fruit from Bordeaux casks and toffee from Chinkapin oak.