Isle of Harris

The Isle of Harris Whisky 'The Hearach' (Gaelic for a resident of Harris) is distilled, matured and bottled entirely on the island. The water the distillery uses comes from the stream Abhainn Cnoc a 'Charrain, which runs over the oldest rock on earth. With the Highlands bordering to the east and the wild, open Atlantic to the west, the Isle of Harris distillery is one of the most remote distilleries in Scotland.

The Hearach is unchill-filtered and uncoloured and is intended to embody the character, soul and elemental nature of the Isle of Harris. The first bottling of The Hearach was released in September 2023 and bottled at 46% alcohol by volume.

The core ingredient of Isle of Harris Gin is sugar kelp, a type of brown alga that tastes slightly sweet. The seaweed is harvested in the spring from the island's local lakes and then dried. Sustainable harvesting means that the sugar kelp is allowed to grow back during the cooler months. The seaweed gives the Isle of Harris Gin its distinctive maritime character, while classic Gin botanicals such as juniper berries, coriander seeds, cassia bark and angelica root provide the typical spicy-sweet Gin flavour. Orange peel, cubeb pepper, liquorice and orris root accentuate the Gin's maritime aroma in small quantities.

Distillation takes place in a small copper still. This was named 'The Dotach' in memory of a similarly small and hot-tempered local woman. 

For maceration, the sugar kelp and separately the remaining botanicals are each filled into a bag and soaked in alcohol for 24 hours. Then the flavoured spirit is filled into the Gin still for distillation together with the bag of botanicals, but without the sugar kelp.

Rather uncommon for Gin, heads and tails are cut off during distillation and only the heart piece of the spirit ends up in the bottle. The foreshots have a very high alcohol content, but little flavour. There is also little flavour left in the faints and the alcohol content is lower than desired. In the middle cut, the flavour and alcohol strength are exactly what the distillers aim at. Unconventionally, they do not reuse the heads and tails in the next batches, but remove them completely. Although this is an expensive decision, they only want to capture the pure flavour of the heart in the Isle of Harris Gin.

After distillation, each bottle is hand-filled and labelled directly at the distillery. 

The soft water used by the distillery comes from the rainwater stream Abhainn Cnoc a 'Charrain and has a low mineral content. 

To distil the Whisky, Harris has a wash still, which is filled with 6,000 litres, and a spirit still, which is filled with 3,500 litres.

The Isle of Harris distillery uses medium smoked barley with a phenolic content of 13-15ppm for its Whisky. The mash tun is filled with 1.5 tonnes of grist, which passes through three lautering processes. The result is about 6,000 litres of mash, each of which is poured into the distillery's eight washbacks, made of common Douglas fir. After a fermentation period of three to five days, Harris gets a fruity wort that has aromas of apple, pear and tropical fruit.

Opened in 2015, the Isle of Harris Distillery was the brainchild of Anderson 'Burr' Bakewell, who has been associated with the island for over 50 years and was keen to do something about the weak local economy and the associated population decline. In the spirit of the 'Social Distillery', the team is made up of only locals, each of the five distillers hired are completely new to the Whisky industry and specially trained to make the Harris Whisky. The leftover barley is given to small-scale farmers on the island for their livestock. And the community 'Nosing Panel' meets regularly to check the quality of the spirits.

The distillery, with its welcoming peat fire always burning in the fireplace of the visitor centre, attracts local residents and visitors alike and is open to guests Monday to Saturday. There is a shop with regional products and a canteen where both staff and visitors can get simple meals made from fresh and regional ingredients. Guided tours of the distillery are also available, lasting about an hour and including Whisky and Gin samples.