Are you producing a fully Scottish malt at Bladnoch, with Scottish barley?
Raymond: A “fully Scottish” malt from a distillery that is much closer to Ireland than to the Highlands or even Glasgow; from a distillery that up until the mid nineteen fifties used the Irish style of triple distilling and like Irish distillers doesn’t use peated malt; from a distillery that between 1911 and 1937 was owned by Royal Irish Distillers of Belfast; from a distillery situated in remote Galloway were its’ inhabitants are known in Scotland as the Galloway Irish and where in the last century Gaelic was spoken. To be sure I’ll be producing a “fully Scottish” malt! We buy our malt from Simpsons of Berwick on Tweed, variety ‘Optic’ or ‘Chariot’. We hope in the autumn to be sourcing it from a farmer at Garlieston 6 miles from the distillery. He has an organic farm and although I have no real preference for organically grown barley, I am pleased to be able to use a local product. It will cost us very slightly more but then because of our small scale production, most of our costs ar
