Your personal whisky mentor. Isla helps you prepare for your Whisky Ambassador certification with tailored guidance and expert knowledge.
Study Help
Get explanations on whisky regions, production methods, and tasting notes.
Quiz Practice
Test your knowledge with guided Q&A and exam-style questions.
Tasting Guidance
Learn to identify flavours, aromas, and develop your palate.
Available with Premium subscription
Murray's Notes
In 2017, on the west coast of Scotland near Drimnin, a woman who had left a career in management consulting started a distillery. Annabel Thomas didn't inherit a whisky business. She built one from scratch, on a hillside overlooking the Sound of Mull, with no whisky industry experience and a conviction that sustainability wasn't a marketing slogan — it was an operating principle.
Nc'nean — named after the Gaelic goddess of the same name — began distilling in 2017 and released its first single malt in 2021. It is organic. It is powered by renewable energy. It uses recycled glass for bottles and sends zero waste to landfill. These are not afterthoughts. They are built into the distillery's cost structure and decision-making from day one.
The whisky itself is light, fruity, and gently herbal — unpeated, matured in a combination of ex-bourbon, ex-STR (shaved, toasted, recharred), and wine casks. It is not trying to be an Islay heavy hitter. It is not trying to be a sherry bomb. It is trying to be a whisky you can drink every day that was made without wrecking the place it came from. Whether that's enough to build a brand on is an open question. But the first release sold out in hours, and subsequent batches have done the same.
Nc'nean is the argument that whisky's future might not look like its past. The taste will tell.
Nc'nean uses organic barley, sourced from local Scottish farms, and peat-free malt. The distillery operates two copper pot stills of modest size, producing around 140,000 litres of alcohol per year. Water comes from a local spring on the hillside above the distillery. Fermentation is long — typically 90+ hours — in stainless steel washbacks, producing an estery, fruity new-make spirit. Maturation uses a combination of ex-bourbon American oak, ex-STR casks, and ex-wine casks. The distillery runs entirely on renewable energy, uses recycled glass bottles, and sends zero waste to landfill. Nc'nean is also one of the few distilleries in Scotland to publish a full carbon audit of its operations.
Murray's Pick
Price guide: ~48-55
Stone fruit, lemon zest, herbal tea, vanilla, gentle spice finish
Drink it neat or with a splash of water. The fruit and herb character opens beautifully.
Nc'nean offers guided tours of the distillery (£15) and a longer experience including a tasting of the core range (£30). The distillery sits on a hillside with views across the Sound of Mull — one of the more dramatic settings for a Scotch distillery. Booking in advance is essential, as tour sizes are small.