"You have to offer value at every level" declares Simon Thompson, one half of Thompson Brothers distillers, independent bottlers and founders of Dornoch Distillery, in Dornoch in the north of Scotland, deep in the heart of the Highlands.

That's why he and brother Phil are always trying to work out what they "can get away with" at the "lower end" of the price spectrum, because Phil says, "You want to sell out and turn over quickly."

Phil and Simon also own Dornoch Castle Hotel. The hotel has been in the Thompson family for 25 years, and that's where their whisky journey really began.

"Back in the day," Simon explains, "we used to run the family hotel whisky bar. That led to us kind of taking on whisky as a bit of a hobby. We would end up taking it a little bit too seriously; start collecting; start falling in love with older styles of whisky; start going to live auctions, picking up bottles for ourselves and for our bar."

In this episode, Simon and Phil tell John how their hobby quickly led them to research older styles of whisky "trying ot figure out where certain flavours and intensities of flavours that existed in older bottles" came from. They began "reverse engineering old style whisky which then eventually turned into some practical experimentatation, which turned into building a tiny, baby distillery."

At Dornoch Distillery, Phil continues, "we probably have deliberately the most expensive cost of production - even if you're to ignore the small scale."

They only use "heritage varieties" of barely that were in use before the 1960s; brewing strains of yeast instead of modern distillers' yeast; extra long fermentation - "seven days as standard"; and manual cut points.

"We make our cut points based on the sense of smell, sense of taste by whoever's rolling the stills on that particular day," Simon says.

"It allows them," Phil interjects, "to kind of slow down and speed up where required when it's coming towards the cut point."

"Basically everything's geared towards maximising old style quality at great expense of materials, time and lower yield. So yeah, it's one extreme, probably not a scalable model," Simon continues.

The brothers are now building a new distillery - Struie Distillery - which aims to be 100 percent electrified and completely fossil fuel free.

Where "Dornoch is no holds barred;whatever it takes," Simon says, "Struie is trying to find those sweet spots between old style production and modern production."

"We just need to pay for it," Phil concludes.

Slàinte!

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Socials:

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Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

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