The Process

Shelter Point will be making whisky in the basic, unadulterated manner that underpins the quality of a true artisan produced spirit.

We will be growing our own barley on site. Most distilleries nowadays purchase barley from large malting companies because of economics. This means that barley used to produce many single malts does not have any connection with the geographical location of the distillery. We accept that this may not make much difference, but we want our spirit to be truly local.

We will then malt the barley on site, bringing the grain to germination to encourage the production of starch, and then nipping it in the bud with heat to stop the process. On the west coast of Scotland this was traditionally done using peat which is in plentiful supply locally. We will be trying out various levels of peatiness ourselves.

The water is pure, having run through the Island’s untouched rain forest and down to the water aquifer from where we will extract it with our on-site well.

Distilling. Using our stills made in Scotland but with no financial need to get as much spirit as possible, our expert distiller will take the cut only of the very finest spirit to produce only 25,000 litres in our first year.

Maturing. This is as important part of the process as any. We will be using first fill bourbon barrels sourced directly from Kentucky. We will be paying a premium for these because we are going to personally select them to meet our limited requirements.

We will then mature on site around two hundred metres from the sea and surrounded by mixed woodland forested areas. This will have a direct effect on the spirit; think of the differences between an Islay matured off the west coast of Scotland and a Speyside matured in the more sheltered mainland.