They're all about The Draam at Isle of Raasay Distillery.

It's their signature single malt, based on a six-cask recipe created by founder and Master Distiller, Alasdair Day. It's 80% of what they produce.

"We wanted to make a Hebridean whisky," Alasdair tells John in this episode.

Hebridean?

"Something lightly peated," Alasdair explains. "So not unpeated, not heavily peated. But somewhere in between."

"A rugged windswept island off an island, you need that peaty characteristic," he continues.

But Alasdair and co-founder Bill Dobbie also wanted a "dark fruit character", like Bowmore from the 1960s and early 1970s.

So Alasdair decided to produce both peated and unpeatead spirit, and to mature these individual spirits separately in rye whiskey casks, virgin Chinkapin oak casks and Bordeaux red wine casks and then vat them together. Having designed the whisky, they designed the process to the make it, "and then gave the design to the architect to put the building round the process."

In 2017, the first licensed distillery on Raasay began production.

Establishing a distillery on a tiny island east of the Isle of Skye on Scotland's west coast was far from what Alasdair envisioned when he first went into the whisky business.

"My great grandfather had been a whisky blender in Coldstream," he says.

Now Coldstream's a small town on the Scottish border with England, not known for any whisky tradition. But in 2009, Alasdair inherited his great grandfather's cellar book which contained recipes for blended whisky dating from 1899 to 1916 and he decided to recreate some, buying casks of fully mature whisky to blend together...

But why don't you let Alasdair tell the story himself?

Pour yourself a dram - or Draam - and listen in as Alasdair tells John the story of Isle of Raasay Distillery; explains the different flavours imparted by all the different barrels they use; and extols the beauty of one of Scotland's lesser known islands.

Oh and by the way, Alasdair claims Raasay Distillery has the best distillery view in the world... well maybe. But when you've heard his claim, you can be the judge.

Slàinte!

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Socials:

@C2GWhisky

@JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

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