Not every islander features in the 90‐second film that hit cinema screens in May, but an awful lot do – and happily so, given the importance of the distillery that is the island’s biggest single employer. The solution was to let the locals tell it in their own words in the current Say Hello to Jura campaign. Her issue is simply this: “The further you get away from the island, the more difficult it is to tell that story of ‘made in Scotland by a tiny island community’,” she explains. “Once there you can’t help but take it to your heart,” says Beeston, who fell under its spell eight years ago while working for Bowmore. “For the past two years we’ve brought 150 of our US colleagues to Jura in May and June.” At which point it’s job done, like the cynical buyer we met earlier, and the same goes for the 8,000 tourists who visit the distillery each year. “We need to build awareness of the story, and we need to build belief and confidence in the brand,” she says. In the US, the focus is on distributor E&J Gallo.
#Isle of jura vodka cracked#
Further afield, she admits that “we haven’t cracked the US”, while there seems to be plenty of potential in Asia now that Whyte & Mackay is owned by Philippines‐ based Emperador Distillers. “We’re number four by value on a MAT basis, and in the past 12 weeks we’ve become number two.”Īcross the Channel, Jura is a reasonably substantial single malt in France, with sales of around 17,000 cases a year, followed by Germany then markets such as Sweden, Italy and Spain. “The UK is by far and away our largest single market,” says Beeston.
Jura Distillery during the Jura Whisky Festivalīruichladdich bounced back as an independently‐owned distillery that is now with Rémy Cointreau, while Jura has gone on to become a 150,000‐case malt brand that has done extremely well at home. A year later Whyte & Mackay closed Bruichladdich on Islay and maintained production at Jura – a decision that may well have saved the distillery. By this stage, the bottle had acquired its curved middle, and the distillery was part of Whyte & Mackay, which acquired its previous owner, Invergordon Distillers, in 1994. She reckons the real commitment to creating a brand began with the launch of Jura expressions such as Superstition, which appeared in 2002. The distillery began bottling an Isle of Jura single malt in 1974 “but I don’t think it was keeping the lights on”, says Beeston.
“I don’t believe they started to create peated whiskies until the early 1990s, and even then they were only using peat for one or two weeks a year,” she says. “They fitted tall stills to produce a lighter spirit that was better suited to the blended market.” And, unlike the neighbouring whiskies from Islay, it was unpeated. It was a joint venture by blender Charles Mackinlay & Co of Leith and two of the island’s landowners, who “wanted to create a way for the island to have a long‐term future”, says Beeston. At some point the roof was ripped off to avoid paying rent, and as the rain poured in it seemed to be the end of whisky‐making on the island.Īgainst the odds, in 1963, a new Jura distillery rose from the ashes. The first distillery was founded in 1810 by Jura’s then owner, Archibald Campbell, and closed in 1901. That may have been great for an author seeking solitude, but not for the many islanders who left, never to return, slashing the population from a mid‐ 19th‐century peak of 1,312 to around 212 today. George Orwell, who stayed on Jura to finish his dystopian novel 1984, described it as an “extremely ungettable place”.
The pub and hotel are across the road, and the shop is two doors down.” In the capital, Craighouse, dubbed ‘downtown Jura’, you will find all you need, as she explains: “The pier is just a stone’s throw from the distillery. Once the buyer has given up on their futile quest for mobile reception or Wi‐Fi, they will succumb to this magical isle. To do so will only benefit the whiskies and the brand.”ĭrag the most hard‐bitten supermarket buyer to this remote corner of the Inner Hebrides and it’s job done for Beeston and her team. The two are completely inseparable and we want to put this brilliant island on the map. “To know the island story is to know the distillery, and vice versa. “Quite selfishly we want to attract people to our distillery,” she says. Being responsible for Jura she’s secretly delighted.
If you mistake Jura whisky’s website for that of the island’s tourist board, Kirsteen Beeston, Whyte & Mackay’s head of international malts, is unfazed. *This feature was originally published in the September 2019 issue of The Spirits Business Luckily, the eponymous brand is forging a clear path. While neighbouring island Islay may have almost a dozen distilleries, Jura only has the one and locals are dependent on its success for their employment.