Arbikie brothers happy to play the waiting game

The brothers are taking their time with their strategy – we won’t get to taste an Arbikie Highland Estate dram until 2029. Until then, the family is building an award-winning portfolio of gin and vodka products, growing an international brand that can be found in Harvey Nichols, Harrods, The Ritz and London’s Shard.

“My brother David called me one day and told me he’d discovered that Arbikie had a distillery in 1794 and we had to create a brand. The name was there so we started working towards being a whisky distiller,” says Mr Stirling. “Whisky was always the plan, but we won’t release until we have a 14 year old.”

With many new distilleries rushing out inaugural launches as soon as the product legally becomes Scotch whisky after three years of maturation, it is curious that Arbikie has chosen to wait until 2029 before taking a dram to market – though it is pre-selling 300 casks’ worth.

“We’re traditionalists, we want something that is a serious age statement and gives the whisky time to mature,” says Mr Stirling. “Consumers like a well-aged product. They like something that has sat in a cask and it’s amazing how quickly another 13 years will come around.”

By then, Mr Stirling has high hopes that the burgeoning Indian premium whisky market will be more mature.

“Diageo are working on that just now and it will take years, but the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are becoming more developed. They are populist countries so the markets will develop and whisky has always been a cyclical business but I don’t see why there’s not a market for us. Limited supply, family business in the whisky space; people usually like that.”

Mr Stirling’s opinion is not uninformed. He spent his career in the drinks industry before returning to the family farm. Stints at Diageo, Whyte & Mackay and Jim Beam saw him take in 50 countries around the world. Brother John has “travelled a fair bit” in his role at KPMG, David lives in America, where he co-owns a bar in New York, and another brother, Sandy, is based in Dubai. And yet Arbikie is not yet in the export market.

Patience, it would seem, is a family trait.

“We’ve been concentrating on the UK but we’ll move into other markets,” says Mr Stirling. “It’s about manageable steps, we could have been exporting by now, but between us we decided to concentrate on the UK, and manage that growth. We don’t want to grow too quickly.”

While the plan has always centred on whisky, the company is making the most of the time required for maturation. Its first launch was Scotland’s first vodka made with potatoes rather than the usual wheat base, making it gluten-free. In addition, the copper still that forms a key part of the distillery has given the vodka a depth of flavour more akin to whisky. This has since been followed with a chilli vodka made with Scottish chillies.

Next up for the company was Kirsty’s Gin, made purely from ingredients sourced on the Arbikie estate – including kelp from the sea, carline thistle from the beach, and blueberries from the land. This ability to produce single-source sprits sets Arbikie apart from competitors.

“We’re growing, distilling, maturing, bottling, we have our own water source, it’s all on one site,” says Mr Stirling.

The only thing not done on site is malting, but there are plans to incorporate a malt floor at the distillery - which would create quite probably the world’s only completely single-source whisky.

In an industry where it’s not unthinkable for a unique selling point to be contrived by the direction of the wind blowing over the distillery, Arbikie has something to shout about.

“When the Dutch made genever (the precursor to gin) they sourced their juniper from the north east in Scotland. Our farm growing juniper for gin is repeating history. I think it’s awesome,” says Mr Stirling. “Now we’ve got the drinks business, the farm is our USP. We can grow whatever we like. We can create products because we’ve got ingredients that we’ve grown on the farm. Others can’t do that.”

The brains behind the super-premium gin and vodka products – which retails for £35 – is Kirsty Black. Having worked at the distillery since day one, she was recently joined by Christian Perez. It comes as no surprise that both are graduates from Heriot Watt’s esteemed institute of distilling & brewing. While Ms Black has previously worked in brewing – including a stint at Caledonian Brewery, where she made Duechars, Mr Perez has a background in wine, where he knows single estate very well.

With both its vodka and gin selling well in that luxury space, the company is now profitable, and while Mr Stirling won’t discuss numbers, he admits the company is 40 per cent ahead of target. Currently, the distillery is running at just 60 per cent of capacity.

The company recently announced a blueprint for export, which begins with the US – where the company has a bag of medals from the highly influential San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

“We've got options in the US and discussions are ongoing,” says Mr Stirling. “There’s no rush and we’re extremely busy in the UK. It will come in good time. We know what we want to do and the New York market alone is enormous, but hugely competitive.”

Continental Europe is also on the company’s radar. “If you’re going to the Far East it’s a big undertaking to be there regularity,” he says. “We always want to work face to face, so anywhere that’s close to home: Scandinavia, Germany, France, they’re not far away and we’re happy to stand up in any market.”

Looking ahead and Mr Stirling says the wine-makers mentality will continue to influence the company’s output. “We have to be selective and see what consumers like,” he says. “Fruits have definite seasons, so going back to the single estate process, there’s vintages we could release. That’s a possibility, that’s the farming mentality so we’ll do batches rather than continuously flow products.”

So the future prospects for the company are good – though it’s clear there is no rush to get there.