Final Designs: Raasay While We Wait & Borders

Alongside carefully handcrafted the whiskies themselves, we’ve also been handcrafting the packaging in collaboration with a number of very talented friends in the world of design and print.

The glass is bespoke, the corks are wooden, unvarnished,and debossed, and the whole look encompasses a slightly rustic, work-in-progress feel, that we’ll build on with each release.

Now, the final designs for the first release of Raasay and Borders are here!

We started off with this:

And this:

Then we had these:

Raasay While We Wait:

Raasay While We Wait, as its name suggests, is a taster to pass the time in anticipation of a similar single malt distilled at our own production facility on the Isle of Raasay, which we expect to begin in 2017 and bottle from 2020.

We’ve represented this very clearly in the design with the face of a clock. Whisky takes time, a minimum of 3 years, and that’s just for maturation. In our case, the conversion and extension at Borodale House also has to occur before we can have our own. The Raasay clock marks the time.

Borders:

Borders, a single grain Scotch, represents future distilling in the Scottish Borders. We’re still asking you where that should be. So, this design hails to our heritage and nods to our future.

We’ve marked the town of Coldstream, where J&A Davidson – later Richard Day – licensed grocers stood from 1820 until the Second World War with a golden dot (the colour of whisky) at its position on the River Tweed. The river shows the region in which Richard Day sold the original Tweeddale Blend, and represents a wider area near whichever town becomes home to our future Borders Distillery.

Sketches:

We contacted the artist, Andrew Sinclair of Resipole Studios, who sketched Richard Day for the Tweeddale bottle and asked him to create landscape sketches for Raasay and Borders. The Borders bottle shows Scott’s View, Sir Walter Scott’s favourite view in the region (and one of ours too). For Raasay, we looking out from above where our distillery will be, across the water to the Isle of Skye.

The Final Designs

Raasay While We Wait Single Malt Scotch Whisky

A deliberate representation of future Raasay distilling. Two expressions from one distillery, handcrafted together & finished in Tuscan red wine casks. While waiting for Raasay Distillery to rise beneath Dùn Caan, we’ve crafted a single malt demonstrating our whisky making skills to offer a tantalising taster of what’s to come.

We achieved this by blending two expressions from one distillery; one peated, one unpeated. The whisky then finished in French oak Tuscan wine casks from three  vineyards that produce Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet  Franc.

The result? Single malt whisky of uncommon provenance.

Aptly enough, this special edition, lightly peated whisky is christened While We Wait.

Borders Single Grain Scotch Whisky

An uncommon composition of 50% wheat & 50% malted barley from one distillery, finished in Oloroso sherry casks to represent the future of Borders distilling.

Borders Single Grain is a testament to our 19^th century heritage and a nod to our future.  Our Co-founder Alasdair Day’s great-grandfather blended whisky in the Coldstream – marked by the golden dot on this bottle.

Now, over 150 years since the last distillery in the Scottish Borders, we are returning to our roots and planning to reinstate whisky to the region.

The River Tweed is iconic to this uncommon provenance. It is integral in our R&B story and in forming part of the border between Scotland  and England.

The soft rolling landscape that surrounds it is reflected in character through the light, sweet notes of this whisky.

And because, this is Scotch whisky, a product of famously cool Scotland, we thought our handsome bottles would benefit from a cosy outer layer.

Here’s our Raasay While We Wait tube: