The Unstoppable Thompson Brothers
When it comes to the whisky-geek brothers from Dornoch, sometimes we wonder just how far can they go?
If we were to skip backwards a decade or so, we don’t imagine that even Phil and Simon themselves would have envisioned evolving their hotel and whisky bar destination into small-scale distilling, independent bottling and eventually larger-scale distilling, but that’s what’s playing out right now.
Their projects to date seem to be tainted with something of a Midas touch. Everything they produce encounters such a demand that much of it has to be sold through ballot, with very little actually seeing a shelf. Other, wider-market projects such as their celebrated TB/BSW 6yo blend and their blended malts have also received wide praise and adulation from us whisky botherers.
Their tiny Dornoch Distillery, located just a stone’s throw behind the hotel, makes one of Scotland’s most unique malts, but so little of it exists that a 50cl bottle can fetch £100 at retail and it sells out every time - through ballot, of course.
It makes sense, therefore, that they would follow their journey further. In 2025, they are about to realise the next step in their unstoppable march into virtually every whisky geek's heart, through their brand new distillery project: Struie. Well that, and good old fashioned, honest flavour and integrity.
Whisky has strange ways of encouraging people to follow their passion and it’s always fascinating. We thought we’d reach out as the boys are busy furthering their distillery construction plans and also releasing what must be one of the most exciting releases from them yet.
Read on to discover what it’s all about.
An Interview with Simon Thompson
With Innes Glenn
IG:You’re getting ready to build Dornoch South, which is now known as Struie Distillery. Tell us about the moment you decided to go for it. Paint a picture for us.
ST: We’d been thinking about a larger distillery and had been scouting for sites. When we had the opportunity to get a large site, only a few hundred metres from Dornoch Distillery and Dornoch Castle, it made total sense for us to go for it.
IG: Dornoch Distillery has been a hotbed of experimentation, single casks, and variability in your quest for old school malt characteristics. You’ve previously mentioned that you would go bankrupt if you did Dornoch at the scale of Struie. Where will you streamline?
ST: Great question. We’ve been experimenting at other distilleries (as modern distillers’ yeast is not allowed in Dornoch) bringing in elements of Dornoch production and mixing it with modern production, while being respectful of the house style. Each time we adjust variables to find the balance point between flavour, texture and complexity, while being more conscious of the yield and cost of production, which will affect the eventual price of a bottle on the shop shelf.
IG: What should people expect from Struie whisky?
ST: We are looking to run a range of styles over the production year in order to give us different components for composing larger releases in the future. A bit like Yamazaki do or how Caribbean Rum distilleries run multiple marques for internal blending.
With our increasing experience and confidence in blending, this is the right approach for scale.
Struie will compete hard on quality and flavour while aiming to be competitive on price. Where we will spend extra on production, we’ll save on energy due to our focus on extreme energy efficiency and onsite renewables.
IG: Zooming out and thinking about the company’s offerings broadly, with bottlings from Thompson Bros (from more affordable blends to exotic single malts, as well as Gin and beyond), the existing Dornoch Distillery, the upcoming Struie Distillery, and even the Dornoch Castle Hotel (ahem, Whisky Club and “whisky bar from afar”), what do you want the consumer’s relationship to be with you? How should an enthusiast view the portfolio?
ST: We are whisky enthusiasts first and foremost and cater to whisky enthusiasts so we do the kinds of things we’d like to see be done and at fair value. We do cover a lot of bases; from the solid £30-£60 daily drinkers, to unique one off projects and fair value specialist and older whisky (and other spirits). Dornoch is made for those looking for something totally unique in modern whisky. Drams From Afar has been a great excuse to open more rare bottles from our collection, with part assigned to Drams From Afar and part going to the bar (and part for me and Phil). We designed the club to make sense if you only came up once a year and there are some great remote benefits too.
IG: Have you ever given a customer that “aha” whisky moment? The one where someone realises how great whisky can be? If so, can you share?
ST: We were lucky at the Dornoch Castle bar where we encountered many people on their whisky journeys. We always had some mind blowing whisky and it's something we would sometimes slide a small measure out for someone who has spent an evening experimenting and they were like, “I loved these but this is another level entirely”. I used to buy up lots of second hand copies of Charles MacLeans Miscellany of Whisky that I would hand out to anyone who was getting deep into the path as it's a good text for people transitioning from enthusiastic casual to whisky nerd. These days I like to see people's reactions to Dornoch spirit as there is nothing else like it made today.
IG: You’ve been vocal about challenges in the independent bottling community, as well as changing behaviors of the whisky consumer more broadly. Is it all just noise in the face of a strategy to make something people want to drink? Or is it changing what you want to do for them? We’re thinking about the affordable (and lauded) SRV5 and TB/BSW bottle series you’ve been making, as examples.
ST: We are definitely in a time of rebalance and hopefully more of a return to fundamentals within whisky. We always had an expectation we’d work through a down market at some point and had wargamed strategies to excel in that environment. Whisky is always going to overshoot on the upswing and undershoot on the downswing. It’s just the nature of production and sales being separated by so many years so you have to plan accordingly and there are ways of coming out on top in the overshoot and the undershoot.
What we are doing already is working pretty well, but we have various projects in the pipe with a range of timelines. On the day this interview goes live, you’ll see us launch something pretty special and unique which will be on a larger scale and should be a real no-brainer for people… not quite like anything you’ve seen before [more below].
IG: You have a history of crowdfunding. How has this changed how you’ve been able to interact with customers, and what would you hope to achieve with a future crowdfunding campaign? And perhaps a note on how you think a potential investor should approach a crowdfunding campaign from a purely financial (and risk) perspective?
ST: Dornoch and Thompson Bros has been running for 8 years now and it was all sparked from rewards based crowdfunding, personal funds and selling our house. Without community support, we would never have been able to pull it off. From that initial investment, we were able to grow to where we are now, ready to make that next jump in scale. Many of those who supported us at our startup would come up and visit and continue to be customers over the years.
This time round, we are offering equity in the overall group company, which includes Dornoch Distillery, Thompson Bros, Dornoch Castle Hotel and the Struie Distillery project, including all maturing stock and assets (nothing is hived off).
With owning a part of a company, you strap in for the journey with us. If we totally nosedive and somehow become worth zero, then your shares are worth zero. You have to always lead with the standard disclaimer of “don’t invest unless you are prepared to lose all the money you invest, this is a high risk investment” so naturally you should never invest what you can't afford to lose.
On the flip side, building out Struie uncaps what Thompson Bros can do with much larger bottling, logistics and storage facilities. We have almost eight years of Dornoch stock and good Indy stocks, all of which should comfortably support Struie production through the early years, and things potentially look very good for everyone when mature Struie liquid is ready.
IG: You’ve been quite explicit about your flavour-profile goals at Dornoch Distillery, naming things like 60’s Laphroaig. James Eadie’s Project 1927 brought into the light some of the more hidden aspects of such endeavors, but also laid bare for participants the costs and uncertainties associated with them. Will there ever be a point at which big distilleries say “their whisky is too good. We have to do it.”?
ST: The truth is that going fully old school costs a lot more to produce. The barley yields less per acre and yields a lot less alcohol per tonne, even less if you don't use distillers yeast. The value of the stock you lay down needs to increase in value at a compounding rate that beats inflation and standard investments (or otherwise you wouldn’t bother putting all your money into production), so if the cost to lay down a barrel is significantly higher, the eventual sale price needs to be higher. It's also hard to just do a bit as it might be better than all your other stock from that distillery.
I’d like to see an increase in distilleries developing yeasts unique to them so there is more variation between distilleries. Great for blending components and great for experiencing as a single malt.
IG: Serge mentioned to Roy of Aqvavitae in interview - and I paraphrase - that modern whisky is broadly higher quality, but also has a lower standard deviation. So you have less truly bad whisky, but you also have fewer unicorns. Would you agree? And if so, do you think variability will be ever-present when chasing, say, uber-fruit?
ST: I roughly agree but production from certain distilleries at certain time frames were consistently amazing so more a ‘herd of unicorns’. Dornoch production is certainly variable and that's something we embrace to keep things interesting for us in production and for future drinkers. Certainly uber-fruit is consistently achievable by design, though.
IG: Building a business, or businesses, is tough. What brings you joy? (The customers? The production? The mission to “unlock” the secret of old-style whisky? Something else?)
ST: All of the above and I'd like to add projects to the joy list. We have so many interesting things in maturation and more projects in the works and planned for the future. I particularly enjoy doing production collaborations at other distilleries and we’ve also spent a lot of time designing scalable products to take advantage of the increased bottling and logistics capacity Struie will have.
IG: What’s with all the cats?
ST: Phil loves cats and it seems a lot of our artists and customers do too. Originally we used cats to represent a certain Sutherland distillery, if we could buy name-protected barrels. Eventually it got out of control and cats end up on a lot of labels!
IG: Lastly, when do you expect to break ground on Dornoch South? And how can people keep informed?
ST: Having done a lot of projects, I hate talking about timelines as something always slips. Six months ago I was aiming for March/April and here we are already. There were quite a few delays getting to the point of going live with funding. We would be looking at July or August - but that could easily slip if the tender process takes longer than anticipated.
Images courtesy of Thompson Bros/Dornoch Distillery
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