Ardross Distillery
Single-malt distillery · Easter Ross, since 2019
What they look for (Hospitality & Food): Visitor-experience hosts and tour guides who can host international visitors with calm and explain whisky-making accurately and unpretentiously, in real time, all day.
What would help you contribute to a young distillery still building its reputation?
A new Highland distillery that decided not to release a whisky for fifteen years
Ardross Distillery began producing spirit in 2019 in a purpose-built site in Easter Ross. Unusually, its founders publicly committed not to release any whisky bearing the Ardross name for fifteen years from first fill.
The fifteen-year decision
Most new distilleries release a three-year-old whisky as soon as legally possible. Ardross's founders argued that this is precisely the practice that has hurt the reputation of the new-wave Scotch industry.
What it's like to work there
The site employs forty people, with another twenty in the visitor centre during peak season. Shifts run around the still schedule.
Recruitment in a tight Highland labour market
Easter Ross is not a high-population area, and Ardross competes for staff with established distilleries.
"Patience is the product. Everything else is a way of paying for it."