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near Dingwall, came up with an innovative way of raising finance for his distillery – he turned to crowdfunding.

Glen Wyvis raised £2.6m in 2016 and £1.1m last year, giving it more than 3,000 shareholders and making it Scotland’s first community-owned distillery. The distillery is already making its own gin after an initial release was made for it by Shetland Reel at Saxa Vord.

Glen Wyvis is also laying down spirit to produce its own whisky, after selling all 1,600 bottles of Highland Inspiration, a single malt bottled from another distillery to mark the laying of the distillery’s foundation stone in 2017.

Despite overcoming the finance hurdle, the road hasn’t been totally smooth. Last year, Highland Council turned down the distillery’s application to open a visitors’ centre due to concerns about the road to the site.

But Glen Wyvis has bounced back with another innovative idea. “We’ve diversified by taking the visitor attraction to the people,” office manager Josh Fraser said, adding: “Over the past four weeks, we’ve been operating a gin wagon beside Nessie at the Clansman Hotel on the shore of Loch Ness – a location already visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

“We sell our gin and offer visitors the chance to have a virtual reality tour of the distillery. They may not be able to come to us, but we can bring them here using VR.”

Glen Wyvis founder and managing director John Mckenzie at the community-owned distillery, Scotland’s first

Smaller players are coming into the whisky market, with good products