23/03/2025
Chapter 30
My first peek at...Struie Distillery - #3
Scotland’s whisky landscape is always evolving, and one of the most exciting new projects on the horizon is Struie. Rooted in tradition yet driven by innovation, Struie aims to create whisky with a deep connection to its Highland location, while also pushing the boundaries of sustainability and production methods.
To get an inside look at the journey behind Struie, we’re sitting down again (Leo’s Chapter 15) with Phil & Simon, who are leading the charge in bringing this vision to life. From the meaning behind the name to the selection of the distillery site, we’ll explore what makes Struie unique. We’ll also discuss the thought process behind their stills, fermentation choices, and how their energy-efficient approach will shape the final spirit.
Beyond production, Struie’s impact extends to the whisky community through its crowdfunding initiative, which aims to bring enthusiasts directly into the fold. Plus, with strong ties to Dornoch Distillery and Thompson Bros, we’ll uncover how these projects will complement each other moving forward.
With so much to cover, let’s jump right in and hear directly from Phil & Simon about what whisky lovers can expect from Struie.
Hi Phil & Simon, and thanks for spending some time again with us to talk about Struie. Let's start with the name. What’s the meaning of the name ‘Struie’? And am I pronouncing it correctly?
You are pronouncing it perfectly, which was one of the things that came into the decision-making matrix a little bit. Is this going to be easy for people to pronounce? You know, sometimes it’s difficult to ask for something if you don’t know the pronunciation.
‘Struie’ comes from the location—the Struie Hill. From our site, we look across the Dornoch Firth, and we see Struie Hill in the distance. It’s just under being categorized as a mountain. It’s quite a big craggy hill. The distillery is sandwiched between Dornoch town itself and the Struie Golf Course. We’ve got about 8 and a half acres just in between.
As for the meaning, in Scots, ‘Struie’ does have a meaning, which is ‘to thresh,’ but I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of whether the hill’s name is related to that or if it’s independent. So, we’re still figuring that one out.
When it comes to distilling, location is key and has several implications: water source, ingredients' supply chain, and regional imprinting. Struie will be a Highlands distillery. How did you choose the site for Struie?
We’d been looking for sites in the area. Being close to our existing operations was quite important, and then we just got lucky with having quite a large chunk of land available to us so close to our existing operations, just literally right on the border of Dornoch. That was a big factor.
We knew based on the geography that water would be plentiful, and we’ve had that confirmed now. We’ve had a borehole sunk, including water tests of quantity and quality. So, that’s assured us there’s plenty of water of sufficient quality. The water is a little bit on the hard side, similar to what’s used in distilleries like Glenmorangie and Highland Park. In Scotch whisky, we can’t alter water chemistry, so we work with what’s naturally available. So we’re happy to work with slightly harder water, which is good for fermentation.
Can you tell us anything about the distillery design? What are the choices in terms of washbacks, malting floors (if any), stills' shape and firing, cooling... What drove these decisions?
Fermentation is a mixture of wood and some stainless-steel conicals—that just gives us a bit of flexibility. We’ve got an abundance of fermentation capacity. The distillery is designed to be off-grid capable from its own solar farm. We’ve designed our equipment capacities to match peak energy production in the summer, meaning we can run at full capacity when we have the most energy and scale down during the winter. In summer when we’ve got peak energy, we can run double shift maximum batch size production, five days fermentation. But then as you come out of that peak period you can start reducing the batch size, extending out the fermentation time until you’re down to single shift production.
The stills, the heating and energy system is all-over innovative in design. So we’ve got some pretty unique stuff going on in this both in the still and the condenser to optimise energy recapture. We’ll be using a variation on shell-and-tube condensers, running slightly hotter at the top to create a more gradual phase change, giving characteristics somewhere between a traditional shell-and-tube condenser and a worm tub.
For the heating source we’re using, it’ll have quite a quite a low temperature. So in indirect form with sub-critical water coming from our buffering tanks at 120-130 degrees. Those buffer tanks are being heated by recycled energy, which is going into a new generation very high temperature heat pump with also direct electric backup well back up there for when we’re going from a cold start. So we’re not going to get that big temperature differential like you get with direct firing or direct electric firing.
We may add an external direct electric heater so that we can turn on that option if we want to bring in more of those Maillard type reactions like we get at Dornoch Distillery. That’s not been finalised yet, but that will be a likely addition.
What will be the distillery’s orientation in terms of product offer? Will it be limited to a specific range of products (e.g., single malt only, grain, peated/unpeated, ex-bourbon/sherry ageing, etc.)?
One of our intentions is to run a basket of styles internally, a bit like some of the Japanese distilleries do, such as Yamazaki. Since they don’t have access to different distilleries for blending, they produce multiple styles themselves. We want to do the same, running a variety of styles over the course of each production year to fine-tune larger releases down the line. There won’t be any grain production, though.
In terms of wood policy, we stick to the more traditional realms—first-fill bourbon, first-fill sherry, other fortified wines, recharred, and refill casks. We don’t stray too far beyond that, though we’ve done the occasional experiment. The majority of production will be unpeated, but we’ll likely have a small peated season each year.
What’s the forecast for litres of alcohol annually produced?
We can produce about 250,000 litres of alcohol off-grid, but we do have the ability to supplement energy if we wanted to push that number up to around 400,000 litres.
Struie is launching a crowdfunding project to fund construction. Can you tell us a bit more about the initiative?
Yes, we’ve been privately raising funds for the last few weeks, and now we’re launching a crowdfunding round. We wanted to make sure the project was sufficiently far along before opening it up. Crowdfunding is something that we’ve had strong expectations to do, especially given the success of our initial crowdfunding for Dornoch Distillery.
This time, it’s equity-based, so backers will get shares in the company rather than just rewards. However, there are some perks built in, such as the ability to buy casks from year-one production at a discount. Our goal is to keep ownership distributed among whiskey enthusiasts and those who understand our philosophy rather than relying on a single large investor.
Can we expect any synergies between Struie, Dornoch Distillery, and Thompson Bros?
Absolutely. A major synergy is that our bottling and logistics operations will be moving to the Struie site. Right now, we have a small site in Dornoch that’s been maxed out for years. The new site gives us much more space, allowing us to scale up Thompson Bros and experiment with new product lines.
We’ve also got some exciting new products coming that will take advantage of the increased capacity. Some of these aren’t even in the Struie business plan yet, but they’ll be a great opportunity for growth.
Finally, we know it might be hard to predict precisely at this stage, but when can we expect the start of production?
It’s been a moving target, but as of now, we’re looking at late 2026 for production. It could happen a bit sooner if things go well, or later if we hit any unexpected bumps along the way. But that’s our best estimate right now.
Drams
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Struie Distillery Crowdfunding
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Dornoch Castle Hotel
One of the best Whisky Bars in Scotland, located in the heart of the Castle that hosts the Hotel.
It has successfully been developed , by Simon & Phil, who over the years have created (and shared) their collection of whiskies.