The Isle of Wight isn’t an obvious place for a distillery. A small island of just over 140,000 inhabitants off the southern coast of England, it’s the kind of place famous for vacation cabins and chalky white cliffs, not spirits. But the craft distilling wave finally washed ashore on this out-of-the-way island in 2015, when three friends launched Isle of Wight Distillery with the vision of making whisky.
Things didn’t turn out quite the way they’d imagined. More than eight years later, Isle of Wight hasn’t released a single bottle of whisky. But that’s not because the business failed — far from it. Instead, their Mermaid Gin — created to tide them over until their whisky matured — turned out to be a million-bottle blockbuster. ADI sat down with Sales Director Malcom McClellan for an episode of Voices of Distilling to learn more about how Isle of Wight got started, how Mermaid Gin’s unmistakable bottle was developed, and how major growth has (and hasn’t) changed things.
How did Isle of Wight Distillery begin?
My background is in the international hotel business; I worked around the world for 30-odd years in resort hotels. Conrad Gauntlett was a winemaker on the island for 30 years, and the other partner is Xavier Baker, who was a brewer. We used to meet once a week for a couple of beers, just as friends. And then one day, Xavier said, why don’t we make Isle of Wight whisky? It’s never been done before. There’s never been a distillery on the Isle of Wight.
After much to-ing and fro-ing, we came to ADI in Seattle back in 2014. We picked up a bit of knowledge, talked to a couple of still manufacturers, bought a little still, and started distilling whisky. We very quickly discovered it’s not as easy as you think! And then you’ve got to leave it in the barrel for three years before you can call it whisky. So we sort of morphed into making gin… On the first of August, 2015, we did our first commercial distillation of Mermaid Gin, the London dry gin that’s now in the blue bottle. That week we sold six bottles locally. By the end of 2023, we’re presently in 39 countries and we’re approaching a million bottles a year. It wasn’t actually planned like that. We made Mermaid to subsidize the whisky. Eight-and-a-half years later, we’ve never sold a bottle of whisky.
Why do you think Mermaid Gin has been such a success?
The liquid is good and has always been good and that’s the key, but the main game changer globally was actually the bottle design. We had a stock bottle to begin with. It didn’t have any traction because it wasn’t eye-catching enough. So we adjourned back to our bar on the Isle of Wight and sketched out the rudiments of that bottle — taller, with a flange on the top, scaled like a mermaid, colored like the oceans. We gave it to a bottle designer and they came up with the design in 2017. It’s actually made in Italy by Vetroelite. They made the first runs and they’ve been making them for us ever since.
How have you stayed focused in the face of such rapid growth?
If you’d said to us eight years ago that we’d be where we are now, we’d have laughed at you. It’s been as much of a surprise to us as anyone else that we’ve pulled it off. But having pulled it off, you’ve got to remember, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We’re not geniuses. We just do what we do reasonably well, had a couple strokes of luck, learn by mistakes, and that keeps you grounded. We’re also of a certain age. We’re not actually sprinters. We’ve been around long enough to know what’s important.
Thirsty for more? Watch the full interview with McClellan on Voices of Distilling, hosted by Ronnell Richards.
