Our Home
Lerwick is a charming small harbour town where friendly folk combine earthy Scottish congeniality with a warm Norse character. A distinctive lyric al dialect is spoken, rooted in an ancient Scandinavian language called Nørn.
The Vikings settled in 850AD and to this day the influence is strong. The legendary Up Helly Aa festival takes place every January: a wild, spirited celebration, marking the end of yule by feasting and drinking, a torchlit procession and the burning of a longship.
Whisky Distilleries have become ubiquitous across Scotland. They’ve also sprung up to the South into England and as far North as the Faroes, Iceland and the Norwegian Arctic. However true ‘Scotch’ can only be crafted and matured in Scotland.
The Shetland Islands, Scotland’s most remote outpost, had been quietly forgotten. This posed a compelling opportunity in itself, but became irresistible when we discovered that Shetland has the perfect climate, conditions and natural resources to make a truly extraordinary and unique Single Malt Scotch.
The Perfect Climate
Our advantageous edge over the less predictable Scottish mainland climate is an oceanic sub-Arctic climate, long mild winters and short cool daylight-filled summers.
We’re at 60º North, but where the North Atlantic Drift rewards us with a low temperature differential. Combine this with a gusty average wind speed of 14.7 knots, providing constant natural ventilation of salty sea air, and we have an unmatched climate, perfect for whisky maturation.
The Purest Water
Shetland’s water is extraordinary, naturally crisp, always cool and pure. We have an abundance of rare Paleozoic Metamorphic Rock springs and windswept unsheltered lochs providing the highest quality water in terms of purity and pH level.
Our water can be sourced from secret springs, where there is no agriculture and simply nothing but nature and the elements. We affectionately call these our ‘Springs of Valhalla’.
Our Ethos
We begin as we mean to go on: creating uncompromising, premium whisky, with a true difference. We’re dedicated to meticulous, ex acting standards, to a painstaking, determined, unflinching focus. For us it is a careful, cautious, crafted, finicky and fastidious process, that demands absolute patience.
This is the inception, and we take great pride in our responsibility establishing a new region for scotch whisky. We are pioneers and many will surely follow. But we’re the custodians of Shetland’s first distillery and whisky which will undoubtedly put the name Shetland on the shelves of every great bar around the world.
