LONGER READ: Loch Ness fuels ‘Monster’ new ‘brewstillery’ for Inverness
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Inverness’s first new distillery in 130 years has officially opened, determined to become the top visitor attraction in the city and one of the top in the country, with 100 tour visits per day in peak season.
The £8 million Uile-bheist distillery and its combined brewery will employ around 40 people as it reconnects the Highland capital with its lost whisky and beer history.
The name is Gaelic for “monster” and pronounced Ewl-Uh-Vesht.
And it is wisely cashing in on Scottish folklore including that of our Nessie – safe in her Loch Ness lair 12 miles upstream.
Uile-bheist is part of the Glen Mhor Hotel on the banks of the River Ness and will use water flowing from Loch Ness not only to make the whisky and beer, but also to power the complex via its low carbon sustainability centre on site.
River water will enter through a pioneering district heating system which uses shallow water wells in the car park to fire heat-pumps, a system being eyed by local authorities including Highland Council.
Water is treated by fluorescent light with the only grid requirement being electricity, partly provided by the glass-fronted building’s roof solar installations.
Uile-bheist’s first sought-after casks are being filled in the coming days, and investors can now purchase this very first limited run of 100 casks at £6000-£7000 each at casks@uilebheist.com. Almost 50 casks of what will be a single malt Scotch are already snapped up.
Jon Erasmus, co-owner with wife Victoria, said: “We are quite proud of that. Our scale is craft, not volume.
“Our clean energy process, using the shallow water wells, has been described as ‘exemplary’.”
Uile-bheist’s five signature craft ales will be ready by early April, and there’s to be a run of “new make” whisky for sale not long after.
The opening on Tuesday came after a struggle with council planners for the couple, after it was initially refused planning permission in 2014.
“The project has taken me 15 years to get to this stage and it was a long and difficult journey,” Mr Erasmus said. “Among the reasons for this is that the project area was in the city centre conservation area, beside the river, and was an incredibly technical build being a 21st century building sandwiched between two parts of the 19th century Glen Mhor Hotel.
“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.”
Eyebrows might be raised that in Scotland, the home of whisky, Mr Erasmus as gone to Bamberg in Germany to source the gleaming copper stills and beer tuns.
He said: “The coppersmiths here are fine but you had to deal with two companies. I chose Bamberg primarily as I wanted the best equipment in the world.”
Master brewer Bruce Smith, late of Innes and Gunn, said: “We are using an efficient set up which effectively ‘shares’ the equipment up to a point in the initial process. Thereafter the processes for the craft beer and the whisky obviously differ significantly.
“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. Basically, we will release the first whisky only when we are proud of it and feel it truly represents the brand.”
Uile-bheist will produce 200-300 casks of Highland single malt per year, rising to 500-600 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.
A limited tour programme has started, with a full hourly tour programme starting on April 1.
Tour manager Paddy Fuller (28), who was born across the river in Ballifeary Lane, and previously worked at Tomatin Distillery and The Malt Room in the city centre, said: “We are aiming to make this the biggest tourist attraction in the city, and even further afield.”
Future phases will see a distilling ‘campus’ with increased capacity, a bonded warehouse with shopping plus enhanced tap room, tasting and visitor spaces.
Uile-bheist enlisted Melbourne-based pop culture illustrator Ken Taylor, who has worked with Jack White, The Pixies and Pearl Jam, to design their ‘monster’ motifs.
Large-scale installations by the designer, who also created posters for films Up and How To Train Your Dragon, adorn the tap room and tour space walls.
“Whisky tourism has changed massively in the past five years,” said Mr Erasmus, who hopes to attract many of the near 300,000 annual visitors to Inverness, to the distillery.
“You have Johnnie Walker on Edinburgh’s Princes Street and Macallan investing heavily in visitor experience. It is pointless doing this unless your emphasis is on quality.”
Inverness’s last distilleries were the Glen Mhor, Glen Albyn and Millburn, with their rare bottles still fetching high prices.
They shut in the infamous “whisky loch” days of the ‘80s, when global production outstripped petering demand.
