TUGGY Delap is a woman unafraid of breaking the mould. When not running her farmland estate of Highland cattle and sheep in Argyll, she can be found dreaming up fresh ideas to help develop the family's award-winning craft brewery Fyne Ales.

Mrs Delap, 68, is among a new breed of entrepreneurial Scottish landowners that feature in a BBC Scotland documentary series, Lady Lairds, which will air on Monday.

The cameras chart the ups and downs of life on the Achadunan Estate over the course of a year.

Situated across 4,500 acres at the head of Loch Fyne – and home to 80 Highland cattle and 120 sheep – it has been in the family for more than 100 years, but has evolved considerably.

Mrs Delap inherited the land from her late father Michael Noble, who was the secretary of state for Scotland between 1962 and 1964 in the governments of Harold MacMillan and Alec Douglas-Home.

Yet, she has turned it into more than simply a farm after coining the idea to set-up a microbrewery.

In 2001, she and her late husband Jonny founded Fyne Ales – although Mrs Delap admits her family imagined she was pulling their leg when the ambitious plan was first mooted one Sunday afternoon.

"They all thought 'just humour her, she's having a funny 10 minutes,"' she recalls, wryly.

It has proved to be an inspired brainwave. Over the past 15 years, Fyne Ales has grown to become a multi-award winning international brand with her son Jamie at the helm as managing director.

The film follows their journey to get the estate's trademark Jarl beer ready in time for the forthcoming Society of Independent Brewers' Awards in Glasgow.

In 2015, Fyne Ales won four golds, a silver and a bronze at the event.

"This morning I watched a palette of beer being packed up for Spain," she says. "It goes to Italy, Japan, Russia, America and Ireland – all over the place."

Mrs Delap has never shied from ploughing her own furrow. In her teens, she rebelled against the debutante circuit in London which is where she met her husband Jonny.

"I didn't like being a debutante much," she says. "It was endless parties and I wasn't the original sylph. All this partying was absolutely splendid, but actually there was a perfectly nice chap who didn't want to go to the parties and who I could go to the pub with.

"I used change into my jeans and go out to the pub with him. On one occasion I rang up a girlfriend and found out all about the party I was supposed to be at – then wrote a splendid thank you letter to our hostess."

The couple were married 42 years and have two sons. Jonny passed away in 2009 and the sense of loss is palpable as Mrs Delap shares their sweet love story.

"I used to tell him that he had only really married me because I had a salmon river," she chuckles. "He used to ask: 'what would you rather do – or go fishing?' So we weren't really given much choice. It was always fishing."

The programme also features Joanna Macpherson, who swapped a successful marketing career in London to help manage her family's grand house and grounds at Attadale in Wester Ross, and Emma Paterson who runs the Auchlyne estate in Perthshire while her husband Henry works as an architect.

Mrs Delap is proud to be among the "lady lairds" bucking convention in what is traditionally a male-dominated role.

It is her ambition to continue to grow the estate – future plans include introducing deer and building a hydro scheme – so that it can be passed onto her sons and in turn their children.

"We are regarded, I think, by a lot of people as being 'Oh well, they have inherited everything, they must be rich as Croesus' which isn't true," she says. "You inherit a place and your obligation is to pass it on to the next generation better than it was when you inherited it."

Lady Lairds is on BBC One Scotland, Monday, 9pm