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By Scott Wright

THE newest distillery on the Isle of Arran is poised to unveil its debut single malt, as anticipation builds among whisky enthusiasts for the inaugural release in August.

Lagg Distillery, which is located on the southern edge of the island, began distilling in March 2019, following a multi-million-pound investment by owner Isle of Arran Distillers. It has been making whisky at Lochranza – located on the north of Arran – since the mid-1990s.

The whisky being produced at Lagg, which was once home to a distillery that closed in 1840, is heavily peated in style.

Graham Omand, an Islay native who is distillery manager of Lagg, told The Herald: “Although it is a three year old [malt], this has been building up for well more than three years. It is very exciting. It feels like the culmination of so much planning.

“I am used to seeing this in Lochranza, but I have not seen a malt basically being birthed from scratch and brought to bottle. It is something very few people get to see so it is very exciting.”

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While he said everyone connected to the distillery is excited about the forthcoming release, Mr Omand emphasised that it would be very limited in nature.

He said: “We don’t want to give out too much. The important thing about running a distillery is managing your casks and managing your future releases. It is very tempting [to release whisky when you can] but you are really digging a hole for yourselves years down the line if you have this big gap of barrels you have syphoned off.”

Mr Omand said the Lagg three year old has elicited an enthusiastic response from visitors, including people who attended a recent whisky festival at the distillery.

Members of the Lagg Cask Society, which was set up to give collectors the chance to buy an allocation of 700 casks released by the new distillery, will be chief among those given the first opportunity to acquire the maiden release.

He explained: “They are almost like members of the family – they are people that invested in us when we needed it most. They all got the opportunity to purchase one of the initial bottles.”

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The site occupied by Lagg Distillery was initially earmarked for warehousing for the Lochranza operation, as well as a craft distillery to would “work in tandem” with the original facility. But the plans became more ambitious, and Lagg was ultimately developed into a full-scale distillery. Lagg currently has the capacity to produce 750,000 litres of alcohol per year.

With the company ultimately acquiring more land at Lagg than initially planned, the owners have developed a sizeable visitor centre, which Mr Omand said was the first major attraction for the south end of the island.

He said: “There was really nothing down here of scale that was a drawing point for people. We have a massive visitor centre and distillery combined [in one building] down here. It is much larger than Lochranza in terms of footprint.”

Mr Omand added: “It is early days… Although it seems like a larger scale version of Lochranza, we are still kind of finding our feet.”

Unlike many other Scotch whisky distillers, Lagg has decided not to move into gin production, believing the market for Scottish gin has become saturated.

But it is considering a move into apple brandy production in the long term, with plans to use fruit grown on its own orchard, comprising several thousand trees, that was planted around the distillery in 2018.

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While Mr Omand noted that it will be a few years before the orchard matures and is able to produce sufficient fruit, he has visited distillers in England to gain an insight into production processes.

He said: “Because we are a distilling company through and through, we are actually thinking of producing some kind of apple brandy. It will be a few more years, but we are already doing some research on the principles.”

Explaining that Lagg has not moved into gin because that market has been “over saturated”, Mr Omand said: “We like to think at Isle of Arran Distillers that we are a bit more of a pioneer in the industry.

"We would rather be seen to be doing our own thing than copying what everyone else is doing.”

Lagg Distillery employs around 30 people, while its sister site at Lochranza has in the region of 35 staff.