Crafting spirits in Aberdeenshire – an interview with the Little Brown Dog
Little Brown Dog is an independent bottler and micro distillery based in Fetternear, Aberdeenshire. Established in 2018 by vet and whiskey enthusiast Andrew Smith and farmer Chris Reid, the distillery focuses on creating spirits – including whisky, rum and gin – using locally grown and foraged botanicals.
Everyone thinks that gin is the easiest and quickest drink to make but it actually takes us around a year to produce! This is because we have to grow and forage ingredients, and some things only grow at certain times of the year.
NorthLink Ferries recently collaborated with Little Brown Dog Spirits to release an exclusive rum, which is now available behind the bar onboard the MV Hjaltland and MV Hrossey.
We were delighted to speak to Andrew, one of the Directors at the Little Brown Dog, to find out more about their story…
Q. How did the Little Brown Dog start?
A. We started the Little Brown Dog in September 2018, so we will soon be celebrating our 6th birthday! I was previously a vet, and Chris was one of my clients, and we became good friends over the years. Knowing I had a background in spirits, Chris asked me to help him build a distillery on his farm. I agreed and it has grown arms and legs since then! We named the company after my original wee dog. Her name was Banksy but her nickname was little brown dog or LBD. She used to come with me to all the distilleries around Scotland and was a constant companion.
Q. What kind of products to the Little Brown Dog sell and do you have a personal favourite?
A. We are a spirit company, so we have quite a diverse range of products. We have a very small distillery at the farm where we produce local gins and some kinds of botanical spirits. It is all based on Aberdeenshire ingredients and what we can grow or forage on the farm. We are also independent bottlers, so we bottle casks of predominantly whisky but any spirit than can be matured in an oak cask such as rum. There is a whole other world to rum if you treat it with the same respect that you treat a whisky. The rules are very strict with whisky; you can’t add any sugar or flavourings to it. But if you treat rum the same way, you can create something quite special.
Q. You have recently launched an exclusive rum with NorthLink Ferries which is now available on board. Can you tell us a little bit more about this product and how this collaboration came about?
A. We were entered into the North East Scotland Food and Drink awards this year and two of our products – our Aberdeen Foraged Gin and our Wee Mongrel Blended Rum – were shortlisted for ‘Best New Drink Product’. Our Aberdeen Foraged Gin won the award which was very exciting! NorthLink Ferries also attended the awards as they were sponsoring another category, so I think the win initially put us on your radar. NorthLink were looking for a new locally sourced rum to sell in the bars onboard, so we worked together with the team to blend and bottle a rum exclusively for the boats.
Q. Could you tell us a bit about the process of making your drinks? How long does it take to make them?
A. It varies massively. Everyone thinks that gin is the easiest and quickest drink to make but it actually takes us around a year to produce! This is because we have to grow and forage ingredients, and some things only grow at certain times of the year. As an independent bottler, we buy in spirits mostly from Scotland but also from around the world and we mature them onsite in our two warehouses. We bring in rum from Panema, Venezuela and Dominican Republic which are aged between 8 and 15 years before we blend them. Unlike other spiced rums which have ingredients or sugar added to make the flavour, all of our flavour comes from the rum itself and the different fermentation, distillation and maturation styles used.
Q. You feature a QR code – Scan Yer Dram – on all your products which details the origins of the ingredients used in the product. What inspired you to include this onto every bottle?
A. We have always been keen to have full transparency and share the process of making our products for people as much as possible, as most of our customers are really into their spirits and want to know as much about it as they can. There is a lot more effort and work that goes into some of our products than you might imagine, so it is a nice way to demonstrate the level of quality and detail that goes into our spirits.
Q. What would you say has been the biggest highlight since starting the Little Brown Dog?
A. I would say our first releases such as our first whisky or our first rum – these are all milestones that we were really excited about. But most importantly, I would say the biggest highlight has been building a community of people who genuinely care about what we are doing (and also having a bit of fun while we do it!).
Q. What’s next for the Little Brown Dog? Have you got any exciting projects coming up?
A. We will soon be releasing our last quarter of spirits in October. We release our products in batches and, because most of them are single cask, they are never repeated again! We also got our second warehouse up and running this year which is beginning to fill up with casks. This is exciting as having more casks to play with and spirits to choose from means we can continue to improve what we can offer to our customers.
To find out more about Little Brown Dog Spirits, please visit: https://littlebrowndogspirits.com/
Travellers can enjoy a sip of this delicious and exclusive rum on their sailings, or enter our latest competition here to be in with a chance to win a bottle of your own!
By Amy LeithBorn and raised in Aberdeen with an admiration for Orkney and Shetland, loves to travel and visit new places, enjoys cooking, always listening to music, spends a little too much time on TikTok.
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