Raasay

The Isle of Raasay Distillery was founded in 2017 and started operating in September of that year. It was founded by Alasdair Day and his business partner Bill Dobbie, an online dating entrepreneur. Alasdair’s great-grandfather Richard was a whisky blender for J&A Davidson, a grocery store in Coldstream that he would eventually take over in 1923. A ledger detailing the sales and blending recipes was handed down through the Day family over the years, and it inspired Alasdair – who was previously working in food production and marketing – to make inroads into producing whisky, setting up a company called R&B Distillers in 2014, with the intention to open a distillery on the isle of Raasay and another in the Borders. While the latter venture has still not yet come to fruition, Raasay quickly took shape and every drop of spirit is now matured and bottled on the island, diluted with water from their own well.

While their own spirit was still maturing, R&B partnered with a well-known Highland distillery (which shares its name with a well-known body of water and nearby well-known golf course) to bottle a series of releases called ‘While We Wait’, which would be an advance preview into the style of whisky that Raasay would eventually produce themselves. The focus of While We Wait was on a medium-peated whisky that was finished in Tuscan red wine casks – but as time progressed the Raasay team evolved the cask makeup that would eventually become their first batch.

Raasay Single Malt now uses a six cask recipe – peated and unpeated spirit is matured in casks that have previously held Woodford Reserve Rye whiskey or those that have aged 3 vintages of Bordeaux Red Wine, along with a third portion of spirit matured in virgin Chinkapin oak casks. Chinkapin oak provides darker fruit flavours than the usual Quercus Alba oak, and the team also experimented with various level of char and toast with Spirit of Hven vodka to assess the ideal result for their own spirit. 

Isle of Raasay R-02 Batch 2 is bottled at 46.4% ABV with no colour added and no chill filtration used - the 02 designation is for batches bottled later in the year, and feels to have a slightly more pronounced feel of earthy smoke. There's still a great weight of red fruit flavours and a fantastic rich texture to the mouthfeel, but the smoke element seems to have ben dialled up just a smidge. The balance of flavours and level of complexity is still superb and if you enjoy R-01 you'll absolutely love this one too!