Slàinte Mhath
Nestled on the shores of Loch Alsh, Fairytale Distillery is making the most of local magic to create award-winning gin
Euan Duguid visits the magical Fairytale Distillery in Ardelve
IKNOW I’m a wee bit late to the party on this one, but I’ve just started watching Game Of Thrones. As fans of the show will know, it’s a potent blend of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, gratuitous goings-on and blood-curdling violence. For me, it has breathed fire into my perspective of some well-kent landmarks.
I’m from Lanarkshire and couldn’t help but wonder if an evening of full-swing merriment at Chatelherault hunting lodge, back in the day, would’ve been any different to a Game Of Thrones banquet.
On a recent trip north, a glimpse of Stirling castle provoked imaginings of epoch-changing power-play behind those clifftop walls.
Back in reality, I reckon I’m experiencing Baadermeinhof phenomenon – when something you recently learn or, in this case, watch – starts appearing everywhere.
And it was this very bewitchment that drew me into the latest stop in my gin and whisky wanderings…
In the North West Highlands at Ardelve, the traveller arrives at a tangible portal into another world. With pointy eaves, crooked chimney pots and a colour scheme straight from the Hansel And Gretel range, Fairytale Distillery is a sight to behold.
Nestled on the shores of Loch Alsh, it’s quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
“When people ask us what our slogan is we reply, ‘away with the fairies’!” says the gin distillery’s boss, Thomas Gottwald, a German carpenter by trade.
He’s the man responsible, with wife Manuela, for fashioning this latest addition to the ebullient Scottish gin industry. The German couple moved to the area eight years ago, with Manuela opening a bakery and daughter, Joline, who is now distillery manager, later adding her pizza parlour, Pizzajo.
“There is wonder woven into the landscape here,” Thomas says. “We overlook Eilean Donan Castle, we’re near the fairy pools. The area is also said to be the burial ground of the Otter Kings.”
As the legend goes, the Otter Kings were kind of fairy otters. They were dangerous and would devour any animal or beast which crossed their path. In the current day, affable Thomas’s business philosophy is not quite mammal-eat-mammal – but he and his family know how to set themselves apart from the pack.
“There is a rich heritage of fairy tales in Germany, too.
So we started playing on that parallel, shipping in and constructing these buildings from our native land.”
As the family settled, Thomas stuck up a friendship with neighbour and gin connoisseur Roger Knight.
Roger learned about gin from his uncle, who was chief steward in first class on the QE2.
And it was from these buoyant evenings the makings of another business venture were floated, as Thomas turned his pragmatic skills to learning the art of distilling.
“I bought a schnapps still, named Tinkerbelle, from Austria,” he says, “and Roger and I began sampling our way around the world of gin to develop our ideas.
“Then we turned to two botanists in Stuttgart, Martin Wünsche and Stefan Lipka, to create the final products.”
Tinkerbelle is now housed in one of these marvellous out-buildings, making the most of local magic – water is drawn from a crystal-clear local burn, Allt Mor na Dornie.
Thomas and his team handcraft the spirit to produce a variety of non-chilled filtered, Highland gins that they say “appeal to a wide range of cultures and palates”.
Numbered, rather than named, the gin is packaged in black stone bottles, keeping with this mystical theme.
Although a young entry to the spirit world, Fairytale is already working a spell in the competition circuit.
“There’s landscape” wonder woven into the
Their celebrated Highland Gin No 6 recently won a number of accolades at the World Spirit Awards in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria.
As I prepare to leave Fairytale Distillery, Thomas gazes out west and explains they sit aside a confluence of three sea lochs – Loch Alsh, Loch Long and Loch Duich.
This unique distillery’s presence is also testament to a fateful meeting of forces – and a pioneering flare, beyond the realms of fantasy.