Whisky on a high in India, China

At Annandale, the buildings from the 19th century remain intact, complete with a pagoda-style ventilation turret and a beige brick chimney next to 
a small stream, or burn. Glasgow University archaeologists are digging out the foundations of where the whisky stills once stood so Thomson can restore the plant to how it was originally.
Exports totalled a record £3.1 billion last year. Total sales this year in volume terms are up about 2%, while the value of bottles sold declined about 4%, Hewitt said. The biggest markets are France and the US, though sellers are counting on Brazil, Russia and Asia for growth. “The decisions companies make now are for 10 or 15 years ahead,” Hewitt said.

‘Keeping Alive’

Most malt whiskies, typically drunk in Scotland with a few splashes of water, are made in the Highlands, with a cluster of producers in Speyside near Inverness. Should it come to fruition, the Annandale plant would be one of only half a dozen in what are known as the Lowlands.

The risk for new producers is how they fund themselves before their whisky makes it into the bottle and how they differentiate themselves from existing malts, Robertson said.

“Keeping alive for the first few years is the tricky thing,” Robertson said at Diageo’s Edinburgh offices. “The threat to the mainstream is: can it continue to expand into the markets it's earmarked for itself?”

A professor of consumer psychology based near Oxford in England, Thomson bought Annandale for £1 million from a local farmer in April 2007 and is spending £2.8 million on refurbishment, installing the plant and groundwork. He then reckons it will cost another £500,000 a year until he bottles whisky in 2013 or 2014.

Annandale will include a visitors’ canter and store to cater to tourists whose revenue Thomson hopes will help fund the plant. Thomson’s planning application will be heard in January amid potential problems with the access road, he said. The Scottish government granted aid for the project in April 2008. “If you ask me what I'd like my legacy to be, it would be to bring back a distillery to life,” Thomson said. “And leave it as economically viable.”