Annabel Thomas: Giving up wasn’t an option
When Annabel Thomas founded Nc’nean distillery in 2013, fundraising was an uphill battle – investors just didn’t care about sustainability. Now she owns the UK’s first net-zero whisky distillery and is setting the bar for the industry to follow. In her mind, giving up just wasn’t an option.
The mountains are Annabel Thomas’s happy place. Her and her young family take two holidays a year – both of which are spent on among mountains. They are the perfect metaphor for how it must have felt to build Nc’nean, her B-Corp, zero waste and 100% organic Scotch whisky distillery, on the west-coast of Scotland: a personal Everest of sorts, with a steep climb to get to its summit. “It was really hard,” she sighs. “No investors really cared about sustainability.”
When Thomas’ family had the idea of building a distillery on their family farm, she was working as a strategy consultant in London. To get things off the ground, she took some time off work to gather intel for a business plan. Sh travelled to some distilleries to do tours and came back with her focus: sustainability. It was an angle she’d seen work successfully during her time at Innocent Drinks all the way back in 2009. Could it be applied to whisky?
“I came back feeling very much like there wasn't enough focus on sustainability in the industry,” she says. “There was just a real focus on tradition and doing things the way they've always been done, which is absolutely cool for long established distilleries, but it made me feel like there was maybe a space and indeed a need for someone to do something a bit differently.”
Distiller Lorna Davidson oversees Nc’nean’s casks
And so, in 2013, Thomas left her job and Nc’nean was born. The next few years encompassed raising funds, building the distillery, and in 2017, the team began distilling their first organic whisky. Using only organic Scottish barley at the distillery, which is powered by renewable energy, Nc’nean bottle in a 100% recycled clear glass bottle (a first in Scotch whisky, they think), and divert 99.97% of their waste from landfill.
In 2021 Nc’nean became the first whisky distillery in the UK to be verified as net zero carbon emissions for scopes 1 and 2. Ten years after Thomas took that first leap, and her brand is in 19 markets around the world, with a US expansion the focus for 2024.
Backing herself
Getting Nc’nean off the ground was an uphill battle. Thomas describes raising the money as ‘horrendous’. Back in 2013, investors didn’t see the economic value of working sustainably. “We had many conversations where, for example, our biomass boiler which supplies our renewable energy to do our distilling was very expensive. We were having investors saying we shouldn’t invest in it as it wasn’t the right economic choice, there were no returns there. You’d never have a conversation like that now – even if they thought it, they wouldn’t say it.”
How did Thomas keep her resolve? “I think that it was just not wanting to give up. Once I started saying to people, I was going to do it, I had to. Otherwise I’d have to say ‘I can't do it.’
As founder and CEO, Thomas’ role is very much being the face of Nc’nean. She’s synonymous with the brand and is often out judging awards or hosting tastings, conducting trainings, or talking to journalists. She’s turned her hand to most parts of the business as she’s built her team around her – “the only thing I’ve never done is run the wash”.
One of a kind: Nc’nean Aon 17-302 is the distillery’s first single Sherry cask release
Being the face of a whisky brand as a woman wasn’t something Thomas particularly spent much time thinking about, having worked in positions where her gender wasn’t commented on.
She only got her first inkling of it being an anomaly when it came to facing the public. “I realised that people still found it really surprising. And more people asked me, ‘Do you actually like whisky? And, ‘Are you doing it with your husband? Like I couldn't possibly like whisky or be doing this on my own. That’s when I thought, ‘There's a real problem here.’
The impact this has on drinkers (and the knock-on impact on brands) is something Thomas sees as a key reason to address diversity. “When it impacts perceptions around who we think can drink whisky, it becomes a much bigger problem than you might expect.”
As an industry, it’s something Thomas is helping address with the annual Nc’nean Scholarship, which sees three women spend time at the distillery to experience as many roles as possible, from production to back-of-house. She also sees diversity of thought as important for running a business and as such actively hires from outside the whisky industry to promote thinking differently in the category.
Uphill battle: Ten years later and Nc’nean is an award-winning whisky in 19 markets
Thomas thinks that the perceptions surrounding women and whisky can be partly addressed by having more women in senior roles, and she also cites the Foundation’s Modern Face of Whisky image library as being a great resource for brands to be active in normalising seeing women around whisky.
“I think having that bank [of images] is just such an obvious thing, but it's really, really important because otherwise, brands just pump out the same images again and again.”
The Demeter Collection
In order to help the Foundation continue these kind of initiatives, Thomas has selected a very special whisky to donate to the upcoming Demeter Collection auction. The Nc’nean Aon 17-302 is a six-year-old single cask whisky, distilled during the first few months of Nc’nean’s operation and aged in a 500-litre, ex-oloroso Sherry butt. It’s the first time the brand has released an Aon whisky aged in Sherry butts, and is a one-of-a-kind.
“We just thought that it would be super unique and fun,” says Thomas of her choice. She describes the liquid as having vibrant fruity notes of orange zest, sultana, and raspberry jam, with rich, creamy and wickedly moreish body, all balanced with an underlying spice of ginger, cinnamon, and just a touch of liquorice. It’s a perfect showcase of Nc’nean’s modern spirit working in a traditional cask variety.
Thomas hopes funds raised with the Nc’nean Aon will help to push the industry forward. “I think if we can improve diversity in the industry, then everybody wins: whisky becomes more broadly attractive, the industry becomes more progressive, we get more consumers interested in the product… I’m very keen to see it progress.”
The Demeter Collection auction will run 29 March - 8 April 2024 at whiskyauctioneer.com.
DISCOVER MORE FROM THE CUT
