From a 2007 company to a ceremony with peat on the fire.

The Isle of Harris Distillery stands in Tarbert, the main village and ferry port of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, and belongs to Isle of Harris Distillers Ltd, an independent company. The idea came from Anderson Bakewell, a musicologist, who incorporated the company in 2007 with a view to building the island’s first commercial distillery, ScotchWhisky.com’s Whiskypedia says. English Wikipedia describes it as the first legal distillery built on Harris.

Bakewell gathered whisky-trade veterans around him. Whiskypedia says Simon Erlanger, formerly of Glenmorangie, joined in 2011 as managing director designate, together with Ron MacEachran, a former finance chief at Whyte & Mackay, and that a public grant from the Scottish Government’s food processing scheme in 2012 was the breakthrough that allowed building to begin. English Wikipedia says the building was designed by John R. Coleman Architects and that construction started in spring 2014; it gives the stills’ maker as Frilli Impianti of Siena, in Italy.

The distillery opened on 24 September 2015, Whisky Magazine reported that October, after a seven-year effort. The whole island was invited, and three generations of islanders led the ceremony: a retired deputy lord lieutenant, a member of the distillery team and children from Harris’s two primary schools each placed a peat on the fire in the foyer. The magazine said the business, which calls itself “The Social Distillery,” was expected to bring 20 jobs to an area where long-term work is hard to find, and quoted Bakewell on his wish to put “the essence of Harris in a bottle.”

Whisky takes years, so gin came first. Whiskypedia says Isle of Harris Gin was launched a few weeks after the opening, and English Wikipedia dates the first whisky distillation to 17 December 2015. The company says its gin is infused with sugar kelp seaweed hand-harvested in the Outer Hebrides.

A bottle meant to look like the sea off Luskentyre.

The brand is best known for its glass. The rippled, sea-coloured gin bottle was designed by Stranger & Stranger, according to a case study published by the label maker McClabel. The distillery describes the bottle as evoking the island’s coast, from the wind-blown seas of Luskentyre to the sands of Seilebost, with irregular curves and dimples meant to sit comfortably in the hand. English Wikipedia says the bottles are made in Yorkshire by the Stölzle Glass Group.

The label carries the sea theme into paper. The McClabel case study says the designers wanted a unique label on every bottle, printed on hand-made paper with sea kelp and botanicals built in; to make that commercially workable, Multi-Color Daventry printed a set of 50 different backgrounds by flexography and overprinted them with metallics and varnish to suggest small flecks of kelp. The distillery itself describes the label as flecked with sugar kelp and copper.

The bottle also became part of the distillery’s sustainability story. English Wikipedia, citing the Daily Record, says the company launched a bottle refill scheme in July 2021, so that the glass could be kept rather than thrown away. The company now sells the gin in several versions, among them a Tidal Strength bottling and From The Sea, and has issued special editions such as The Harris Cèilidh, whose bottle it describes as inspired by the green machair grasslands of the Outer Hebrides.

When the whisky arrived, it got a sibling bottle. Scottish Financial News reported in August 2023 that The Hearach, a name meaning a native of Harris in Gaelic, would go on sale on 23 September 2023, matured in bourbon, oloroso and fino casks. The Lovely Package reported in December 2023 that its bottle was also by Stranger & Stranger, that it had been designed some nine years earlier alongside the gin bottle and kept secret until launch, and that both shared a single brief: to “bottle the Island.”

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.

An island business, a decade on.

The company has stayed independent. Scottish Financial News reported in August 2023 that it had 18 investors, among them the public agency Scottish Enterprise and backers from the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, and quoted Ron MacEachran as executive chairman. Whisky Magazine reported in August 2025 that Simon Erlanger would retire as managing director at the end of September 2025 after 14 years with the company.

The range has since been reorganised around the island’s name. In July 2026 the distillery released Isle of Harris Whisky, a lightly peated single malt matured in ex-bourbon and ex-oloroso casks, as a permanent signature bottling; it went on sale first at the Tarbert shop on 14 July, Dramface reported, with a wider roll-out in August. The same report said The Hearach and The Oloroso would continue under an Isle of Harris Single Malt Scotch Whisky umbrella, with updated labels, new gift boxes and a simpler presentation across the range, and quoted Shona Macleod, the distillery blender.

For a design guide, Isle of Harris shows how a small island distillery can make its packaging stand for a place, with the colour of the sea in the glass and kelp-flecked paper on the label. Compare The Botanist, Bruichladdich’s Islay gin, and Talisker, the Skye single malt. For this guide we use Luskentyre aqua, sea teal and copper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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