A Victorian hotel under Dùn Caan becomes a distillery.

The Isle of Raasay Distillery stands on Raasay, a small island in the Inner Hebrides between the Isle of Skye and the Scottish mainland. It is run by R&B Distillers, an Edinburgh company whose co-founders, Bill Dobbie and Alasdair Day, first met in 2013, the distillery says. By 2015, it says, they had settled on Raasay as the place to make their whisky. That year R&B bought Borodale House, a derelict Victorian hotel on the island, with plans to turn it into a distillery and visitor centre, Scotch Whisky (scotchwhisky.com) reported in September 2017.

Highland Council granted planning permission in February 2016, and building work had begun by June 2016, Scotch Whisky reported on 14 June 2016. The house sits beneath Dùn Caan, the island’s highest point, with views across the water to Skye and the Cuillin mountains, and the plan was for two copper pot stills made by Frilli in Tuscany. Alasdair Day told the magazine that the company aimed to be “Scotland’s leading craft distiller.”

The stills were first run on 12 September 2017, ahead of the official opening later that week, Scotch Whisky reported that day; the distillery dates its opening to 14 September 2017. The company describes it as the island’s first legal distillation, set against what it calls “centuries of illicit distilling” on Raasay. Scotch Whisky said the new spirit would be light, fruity and delicately smoky, matured on site in first-fill American oak, European oak and Tuscan red wine casks, and that the distiller Iain Robertson had been appointed that July, with the experienced distiller Chris Anderson, formerly of Dewar’s and Caol Ila, overseeing production for the first five months. The distillery says everything it makes is distilled, matured, bottled and shipped from the island.

While We Wait, a first gin and a first single malt.

A new distillery has to wait at least three years before its spirit can be sold as Scotch whisky. R&B filled the gap with Raasay While We Wait, a series of peated single malts bottled from other distilleries to preview the style it intended to make, Scotch Whisky reported in 2017.

The first spirit actually made on the island to reach the public was a gin. On 27 July 2019 the distillery launched Isle of Raasay Gin, which The Scottish Gin Society described that day as the first legal spirit from the island. It reported that the gin is distilled in a Frilli copper pot still with ten botanicals, among them rhubarb root and cubeb pepper, and made with water from the distillery’s own well. Alasdair Day said Raasay’s geology and the modern island distillery had inspired both the gin and its presentation.

The first Raasay single malt followed in 2020. SLTN reported on 3 December 2020 that the Isle of Raasay Single Malt Inaugural Release 2020 had been released the previous month, after selling out in advance in September. The magazine said the lightly peated, non-chill-filtered whisky was matured in first-fill Tennessee whiskey casks and finished in first-fill Bordeaux red wine casks, and that it was distilled, matured and bottled on Raasay. Day called it “a really historic moment,” with the first legal Isle of Raasay single malt leaving the island for the first time. The distillery describes its signature whisky as lightly peated with rich dark fruit flavours, inspired by older styles of Hebridean single malt.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Scottish distilleries founded in the past decade and a half: Ardnamurchan, Lindores Abbey, Kingsbarns, Isle of Raasay, Isle of Harris, Wolfburn and Torabhaig. They are spread across the country, from the Fife coast to the islands of the west and the far north of the mainland, and they belong to owners of very different kinds, from family firms to companies that are part of larger drinks groups.

A new distillery has a particular design problem. In that time its identity is carried by other things: a building, a place-name, a founding story, a first release presented as an event, and sometimes a gin or another spirit sold while the casks mature.

That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually distilled, matured and bottled. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, its first releases and how its labels look — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A bottle cast from the island itself.

The strongest design idea at Raasay is the glass. For the inaugural release, SLTN reported, the whisky came in a decanter-style bottle with the island’s fossils and rocks moulded into the glass. Alasdair Day told the magazine the bottle was made using clay moulds of Raasay’s rocks and fossils, calling it “a piece of the island in your hands.”

The gin bottle took the same approach further. In a blog post titled “Gin Refreshed,” the distillery describes how a member of its team foraged for juniper on the island one summer evening in 2021; the sample was 3D scanned, turned into a CAD model, transferred to a mould and blown into glass. The resulting bottle is a glass mould of juniper, rocks and fossils found on Raasay, the distillery says, with Ratharsair, the island’s Gaelic name, engraved on the base, and gold foil on the packaging inspired by the distillery building.

The limited releases later got a look of their own. Paris Packaging Week reported on 8 August 2025 that the distillery had refreshed the packaging for its limited editions in cool slate grey tones meant to evoke the island’s volcanic terrain, with embossed fossil imprints. Managing director William Dobbie said the new look gave the range “a clearer identity” and set the limited releases apart from the core range.

For a design guide, Isle of Raasay shows how a young distillery can make its landscape physical, pressing the island’s geology into the bottle rather than printing a picture of it on the label. Compare Talisker, the long-established single malt from neighbouring Skye, and Torabhaig, another new distillery on Skye. For this guide we use Raasay slate, basalt and foil gold with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Isle of Raasay’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.