How a Distillery Becomes an Icon: The Power of Branded Architecture

What makes a distillery instantly recognisable? Gareth Roberts and Bari Reid explore how branding and architecture come together to create iconic whisky distilleries.

From Lindores Abbey, where Scotland’s first recorded whisky was made, to the striking lighthouse-inspired Benbecula Distillery, they discuss how strong design can make a building—and a brand—legendary.

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  Bari Reid:
  So one of the things that we talk about often is the kind of branded environments and branded buildings. I think probably one of the first ones that captured that was maybe like Lindores. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

  Gareth Roberts:
  Yeah, well, Lindores was, it's acknowledged by the entire industry that 1494, the record of first ever Scottish spirit being made. That is genuinely true and it comes from that place. And as we did that job, we excavated the site and actually found lots more abbey ruins underneath. But part of the process of designing that building was making sure that the old and the new came together. So the building itself has got shop glazing, frameless retail glazing, you know, amazing high-tech glass, all modern equipment. But then the building itself is made up of stone that was robbed out of the Abbey hundreds of years ago when John Knox came and said, you know, destroy these buildings. So it's got that feeling of the ancient and the modern in the building. And that carries on from the building to the fit-out right through to the bottle.

  So if you look at the bottle, the bottle's this beautiful fluted design. It's a work of genius. And it actually goes right back to the fluted columns that you can see in the ruined Abbey. You know, so there's a direct link between the thing that sits on the bar shelf or on your cabinet and the place that it's made, which I think is so holistic that it couldn't really be better and when you explain that. And that, you know, I say about buildings being very beautiful, but also I think that you need to be able to tell the story of a building, tell the story of a brand with one line, really.

  And so Lindores would be, there you go, they took 500 years off. That's what they like to say. You know, it's the first ever distillery in Scotland, or obviously one of lots, but the record of the first ever distillery in Scotland. And then you bring it right up to date, and another example of branding a building to be very legible, to tell a story, is the new Benbecula distillery that we've just completed. It's just started making spirit, hasn't it.

  BR:
  Yeah, so that was, I mean, the last couple of years I've been over to Benbecula once a month.

  GR:
  So tell me the one line story of that building then, describe that building in one line.

  BR:
  Well, I mean, it's a still in a lighthouse. It's such a kind of sweet spot. It's at the end of the causeway, so you're right at the kind of north of the island. So if you're driving on to Benbecula, you know, it's there. And you see it on approach from the other direction as well. So if you come in on the airport, you know, you can kind of see it from a distance. But the amazing thing, I think, with Benbecula is that nobody's ever really said anything about the rest of that building.

  Like that, you know, there's a tall portion of that building and there's a shorter portion. All of the kind of production needed to go into the taller side. There wasn't quite enough space, so it kind of needed a bit of extension on it. And, you know, the lighthouse idea was something that we'd kind of toyed with on those islands before. But it just, like, you know, people send us photos of it when they're driving past, and I think, like, everybody knows that for, you know, as, like, they've just kind of done their initial cask release. And it's what's made the building and the brand. And, you know, their logo has the lighthouse on it. Every picture of it has the lighthouse on it. And it's a real kind of icon of that place now, I think.

  GR:
  And to me, that is good architecture. It is the definition of good architecture. You can just sum it up really easily. It's just one really strong idea. I think if you think of many of your favorite buildings, you'll probably do the same thing. You could probably say the same thing. It's just one really strong, clear idea. And that's also true of branding. You know, many products that we know from fast cars to hotels, you can describe them very simply.
  And the brand is absolutely clear. They know what they want. They set out and they do it. That's it.