What Makes a Good Distillery? A Blend of Beauty & Efficiency

What makes a distillery great? Bari & Gareth discuss the balance between function and beauty in distillery design. From production efficiency to crafting a space that tells your brand’s story, they dive into what makes a distillery not only a place to make whisky but a must-visit destination for enthusiasts.

Should you prioritize efficiency or aesthetics? Are big tourist attractions the way to go, or is there a place for more functional, production-first distilleries? Let’s explore!

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  Bari Reid: So what do you think makes a good distillery?

  Gareth Roberts: A Distillery has to be efficient for production and it has to be beautiful. And I like to say it's the last beautiful building type. I know I just say that to wind people up, but it's true. Like, when did you last see a beautiful school? When did you last see a beautiful hospital? When did you last see a beautiful, even churches aren't beautiful anymore, you know. But a branded building represents a brand. And so it has to be beautiful.

  
  It takes that brand around the world. I mean, look what Macallan did when they wanted to rebrand or to extend and emphasize the prestige brand that they had. They spent a lot of money on. a spaceship, a Prestige spaceship. So a distillery, on the one hand, it's got to be a brilliant place to make whisky. It's got to function very well. It's got to be very efficient. And we know that some of the big distilleries built in the not-too-distant past were built kind of back to front, didn't work very well, difficult places to work. So it doesn't mean you can't make whisky in them, but it's not going to be as cheap. It's not going to be as easy. And then it has to be a brilliant place to visit. For punters, for visitors. And then you've got to try to aim that visit for what they call paddlers and divers. So people that know an awful lot about distilling. I mean, some of the German geeks, the Norwegian geeks that come around, they want to get under the floor. They want full access. Other people who are maybe just visiting on holiday, they've never been there. been to a distillery. They just want to see what it's all about. So that's it. It's got to hit those two targets. It's got to be efficient, an efficient working space. And a lot of that stuff we learned with Jim Swan very early on. Something like a courtyard, you know, where you can access all faces of the building. You can access the back. You can access the front. You can get right the way around it. Vehicle traffic's easy. There's a place to put the effluent. There's a place to take the draft out. It's nice and close to the farms and so on.

  BR: Yeah. And I think like some of them have a definite kind of a front face that's your public face and then you've got the working side of it. But then others are, much more like this is a production facility. You get to kind of see everything and it's maybe not, it's not as refined maybe, but maybe. that's better for your one type of visitors or like that's i think like sometimes we've got clients who aren't interested necessarily in visitors on at the start you know like they so they want to make it all about the product and so if they're doing something unique in the in the process so you know like if they've got like i don't know like worm tub condensers or they're using timber wash bags and all those kind of things like so there's there's different priorities for those different types of spaces and i think it is trying to figure out who is who is that customer that you're aiming for is it going to be the volume people who come to Scotland and want to see something Scottish in that you know in a usually a really nice location yeah or is it people who are really interested in in, in whiskey and i think that that's where, Because of the lessons from these earlier craft distillers, now people are much more direct in their approach. Like you'd say someone like Port of Leith, their kind of business is built around a huge volume of tourists.

  
  Whereas some of the ones that we're looking at at the moment are pure production factories that still need to have a certain amount of high-end finishes and whatever because you're trying to sell maybe millions of litres to people rather than a bottle. So there's all those different kind of things and I think that clients now understand those things a bit more. They're not spending money unnecessarily on high-end finishes if you're not going to have visitors that appreciate that.

  GR: Yeah, there's that strange thing as well, counterintuitive thing, that lots of the established distilleries, they've kind of reached capacity. And they're trying to reduce the number of visitors, but increase the amount of money per head that you get. So they're driving the quality and the cost of the visit up. And then that needs to be reflected in the environment that they create, refitting tasting rooms, refitting warehouses to tell the story better.

  So that's counterintuitive, but that's happening at the same time as the market matures.