52 Whisky Magazine | Issue 161Distillery Focus Isle of Raasay
Opening pages:
The distilery boasts
an incredible view
toward the iconic
Cuillins on Skye.
This page from top:
The still room
exterior. From left to
right: the six-plate
'purifier', spirit
condenser, spirit safe,
low wines safe, low
wines condenser.GETTING
TECHINICAL
Water: Bore hole.
Automation: Semi-automated,
predominantly on mashing.
Energy: Liquid petroleum gas boiler.
Malt: 100% Scottish malt from Crisps
maltster. Unpeated and peated, latter
at 48ppm. In first year Raasay have
used Tartan and Concerto varieties,
plus trials with both Bere barley and
locally grown Raasay barley. Storage in
30-tonne silo. 10 tonnes per week.
Mashing: Semi-lauter tun processing
one-tonne batches of grist. Clear wort.
Fermentation: Six stainless steel
washbacks, fitted with water jackets,
charged with 5,000 litres of wort.
Lallemand’s MW Yeast used so far,
but experimenting with Champagne
yeast. Fermentations range from 67 to
180 hours, due to five-day operation.
Distillation: One pair of copper pot
stills by Frilli, wash still with lantern
neck and spirit still with standard
swan neck. Wash charge of 5,000
litres, spirit charge of 3,600 litres.
Water jacket on wash still lyne arm
(declining), engaged only for certain
spirit styles. A six to seven-hour
distillation run from charging to
emptying, stills operated in tandem.
Shell and tube condensers, but spirit
still can be diverted into a six-plate
‘purifier’ that can raise spirit strength
to 90% and divert vapour via a
botanical basket for gin production.
However, this has not yet been trialled.
Sub coolers and heat exchangers are
used for temperature management
and energy retention.
Maturation: One warehouse on site,
three new warehouses being built
nearby. Current warehouse, on the hill
above the distillery, will become filling
store, dry goods storage and bottling
line. Filling predominantly ex-rye
barrels (Quercus alba), ex Bordeaux
red wine barriques (Quercus robur),
and virgin chinkapin oak (Quercus
muehlenbergii) casks with high toast
and high char.
Capacity: Current production of
188,000 lpa per annum.location proposition for any future
whisky brand.
Iain’s wife is from the island and
her astute recommendation led to
Bill purchasing the derelict Borodale
House. This handsome Victorian home
is named for a nearby Iron Age broch
and occupies a spectacular site with
views out to Skye’s breathtaking Cuillin
Hills. This purchase and the viability
of the site for a distillery led to the
parent company being named Raasay
& Borders Distillers, though it’s worth
noting that the company is not related
to the new Borders Distillery at Hawick,
founded by The Three Stills Company.
After visiting for the first time in
May 2014, Alasdair began working
with plant engineers Allen Associates
on the earliest designs for a Raasay
Distillery. “I was very fortunate being
able to go to them and say, ‘This is the
style of whisky we want to make,’ andwe designed the process around that,”
he says. “We designed the distillery
purposefully to produce different styles
and flavours on site.”
Unlike those new-wave distilleries
choosing to hold off on releasing whisky
until it is at least 10 years old, single
malt from Raasay will be on the shelves
as soon as possible. “We’ve set out
to make an amazing three-years-old
whisky. For us it’s all about quality,
layers, depth and complexity at three
years old. That’s not how most people
are set up,” says Alasdair. “Time will tell,
but I was confident a year ago when we
had our new make. Now, over a year
later, we can see it’s working.”
Key to this development of complex
flavours at a young age is an unusual
plant setup, long fermentations and
quirky wood policy. “We’ve got cooling
jackets on the washbacks, a cooling
jacket on the lyne arm of our wash still,
and a six-copper-plate purifier off the
spirit still lyne arm. We think we’ve got
six, maybe seven different recipes that
we can run through on the same plant,”
Alasdair explains.
The cooling jackets on the washbacks
ensure fermentation doesn’t become
too vigorous, burning the yeast out
before it has finished doing the vital
work of creating alcohol and flavour
compounds. “The view was that slower
fermentations were, I hesitate to use the
word ‘better’, but they give you different
flavour characteristics, specifically those
fruity characteristics,” says Alasdair.
“It’s really with all of that in mind that
we’ve got these cooling jackets on so
that we can actually check (I’m not
going to say control, because we can’t)
the development of the fermentation.
What we want to do is drive these sweet
fruity flavours, and certainly the new
make we’ve got so far would verify
that.” What’s more, the team have also
begun trials with Champagne yeast,
with a view to introducing its use for
unpeated production as an addition to
the distillers’ yeast used thus far.
When activated, the water jacket
on the wash still lyne arm collects050-053-Raasay-WM161.indd 52 25/06/2019 11:40