From fire station to distillery
For decades the station was the base for the town's seven-man fire crew.1,2 Colin and Ros Thompson bought the hotel in 2000, and with their sons Simon and Philip they made its name as a whisky hotel.2
Peated
Dornoch Distillery sits in an old fire station, built in 1881, in the grounds of the Dornoch Castle Hotel.1,2,3 Brothers Simon and Philip Thompson converted it with money from crowdfunding, and it got its licence in December 2016.1,3,4 It can make just 20,000 litres of spirit a year, and it runs trial batches using methods Scottish distilleries used in the 1940s-60s.3
For decades the station was the base for the town's seven-man fire crew.1,2 Colin and Ros Thompson bought the hotel in 2000, and with their sons Simon and Philip they made its name as a whisky hotel.2
Sharp, lively, lemony and spicy, this whisky delivers multigrain bread with lemon from the palate through to the finish.
After the licence came in December 2016, the team began mashing, fermenting and test runs on the column still.3,4,5 In February 2017 it filled 'Cask 0', a test run of single malt spirit, then turned to experimental gin.3,6 On 5 July 2017 it filled its official cask No.1, a 500-litre oloroso butt from Bodegas Robles.8,9,10 That spirit came from unpeated organic Plumage Archer barley, fermented for 7 to 14 days with yeasts from Belgian Trappist breweries.8,9,10
In August 2018 a second crowdfunding campaign set out to move the distillery to an old slaters' yard 200 metres away, but it still works from the fire station.11,12,13 The owners did complete the purchase of that new site.11,12,13 In December 2018 the distillery was trying spent brewers' yeast, which the owners say was commonly used in the 1960s.14,15 It became part of a house style that also uses slow distillation, with the cuts, where the kept spirit is separated, made by sense.14,15 By May 2019 direct electric heating had replaced the stills' underpowered direct gas, chosen over steam because the owners say it gives more caramelisation.13 A new wash charger took heat from the leftovers of each run to warm the next wash, speeding up refills of the stills.13
In 2021 head distiller Jacob Crisp floor malted local barley at Golspie Mill, including peated malt the distillery could not get at the time.15,16 In September 2022 plans were unveiled for Struie Distillery by the old gas works at Dornoch South; Scottish Ministers approved it in 2023 after environment agency SEPA objected over flooding.12,17,18 Crowdfunding in 2025 raised almost £2,400,000, Highlands and Islands Enterprise awarded up to £1.57m, and the plant is planned to make up to 400,000 litres of alcohol a year.12,17,18 By March 2025 Dornoch Distillery Company Ltd had come under the ownership of Thompson Independent Traders Ltd, alongside the hotel and the Thompson Bros bottling business.17,19,20
It uses organic heritage barley, such as Plumage Archer and Maris Otter, floor malted at Warminster.3 Its water comes from the mains through ceramic beaded filters.3 The wash, or fermented beer, is made in 6 open-top washbacks of European oak.3,15 Slow yeasts stretch fermentation to 168-216 hours.3 Whiskypedia says these long fermentations give a fruity, complex flavour.3 It has one wash still of 1,000 litres and one spirit still of 500 litres.3,17 Both are copper pot stills of the alembic shape.3,13
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