Co-founders Bill Dobbie and Alasdair Day first met in 2013 and formed R&B Distillers with the common goal of building Scotland’s leading artisanal distiller. Focusing on local production, provenance, quality and doing things differently. By 2015, they had identified the Isle of Raasay as providing the ingredients for the perfect dram, and planning permission to begin work revitalising the Isle of Raasay’s nineteenth century Borodale House into a state-of-the- art distillery, visitor centre, and luxury accommodation was granted in 2016. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, they set about designing a distillery to create exceptional whisky that develops elegance, complexity, and depth early on in the maturation process and a handcrafted Hebridean gin that encapsulates Raasay’s style, character and impressive geological variety. 

Inspiration for the Isle of Raasay Single Malt came from some older styles of Hebridean single malts. Styles that had been lost through the ages and are not as prevalent anymore. This became the inspiration for the Isle of Raasay Distillery signature flavour profile: a lightly peated whisky, balanced with rich dark fruit flavours. The remarkable geology, island shores, our modern Scottish island distillery and unique water source about the Isle of Raasay inspired both the creation and presentation of the island’s first Scottish gin which was the first legal spirit from Raasay, an island rooted in centuries of illicit distilling.