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Scotch distillery brings whisky making back to Isle of Tiree
Two trad folk musicians have brought whisky distilling back to Scotland’s Hebridean Isle of Tiree after more than 200 years.
Tiree, the most westerly island in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, was once home to around 50 illicit whisky distilleries.
However, Scotch production on the island, which has a population of 650, dried up in the 1800s.
That is until now. Folk musicians Alain Campbell and Ian Smith, who founded Isle of Tiree Distillery in 2012, have announced the release of their first single malt whisky coming from the island.
The distillery’s inaugural whisky release — the first legal single malt whisky produced on the Hebridean island of Tiree in over two centuries — is limited to 800 bottles, priced at £199.99. Last year, an initial pre-sale of 400 bottles sold out in less than two hours.
The first 10 bottles will be reserved and sold at auction from 31 January and 10% of profits from the auction will be donated to local island charities.
Distillery co-founder Campbell said of the release: “We created our distillery to bring whisky production back to the island and this will be the first single malt whisky from Tiree in over 200 years.”
Isle of Tiree Distillery produces just 2,000 litres of pure alcohol per year (LPA), and its co-founders are keen to stick to traditional distilling methods which would historically have been used on the island.
Campbell explained: “We hand mash laureate malted barley in mesh mash bags – hoisted high on wooden blocks to lauter clear the wort into our oak mash tun. This is followed by an extra-long fermentation in our oak washbacks. First distillations take place in our wide copper washstills, followed by carefully distilling the spirit in our 300L spirit still. And then age our whisky in small casks and our maturation happens right on the rocky Tiree coastline.”
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