The whole team is hugely excited about our plans for our distillery and visitor centre at Inverkip – and the challenge for us is that it all takes time.

Time to develop our plans, time to secure planning consent and of course time to secure all of the investment we need to get spades in the ground and see our vision take shape. We anticipate this will happen in 2021.

Once the Ardgowan Distillery is built and our stills are running, our new whisky has to mature for at least three years in casks before it can be classed as Scotch whisky.

This makes it a tougher business than almost any other to break into – our shareholders put their own money at risk to build our project and yet wait years before they can see a return.

So, unless a new distillery is being built by a multinational that can afford to wait, independent distillery owners such as ours need to generate some cashflow to pay their employees and keep the project running until the whisky starts to flow.

Which is why all newbuild distilleries undertake some kind of spirit selling to keep the boat afloat – whether it is branded gin or labelled whisky, or casks yet to mature.

This is something we are doing with Coppersmith – the first in our Clydebuilt range of Scotch whiskies. We are very fortunate to have Max McFarlane, a world-class whisky maker (and Inverkip local), on our team.

He has written a great blog post on our web site which talks all about how he came to make Coppersmith – using premium casks from some of the finest distilleries in Scotland.

If you look back at whisky history, you’ll find our approach is not entirely new.

There was one far-sighted businessman from Kilmarnock who used to sell single malt from his grocer’s shop – but the quality was never that good. So he started mixing and blending whiskies and selling them from the shop.

His name?

Johnnie Walker.

Back then, he did not own a distillery. But the rest, as they say, is history – and since then the company that owns the Johnnie Walker label now owns and manages a number of flagship distilleries Scotland-wide.

And today there are still plenty of businesses – like the original Johnnie Walker – that blend and market whiskies without owning the distilleries themselves.

So what we are doing with Coppersmith, and our future range of Clydebuilt whiskies, is nothing new – and in fact is old as the whisky industry itself.

By making and selling Coppersmith, we generate some income which helps pay the wages of our team and gives us invaluable experience in the trade. And I am pleased to see we are getting some great plaudits and awards for what we have produced.

Our vision remains the same – to build a fantastic new distillery and visitor centre in Inverclyde and create jobs and economic activity in the process.

Great whisky takes time to make. And patience.

By Martin McAdam, Chief Executive Officer, the Ardgowan Distillery