Forget Speyside – Fife is the true spirits capital of Scotland.
The kingdom is home to Cameronbridge Distillery in Leven, the biggest grain distillery in Europe.
It’s from there that global drinks giant Diageo pumps out gallons of distilled liquid for brands including Smirnoff vodka and Gordon’s and Tanqueray gins.
Now, a drinks entrepreneur who grew up in the shadow of Cameronbridge wants to make Fife the centre of the burgeoning non-alcoholic spirits industry.
Upper Largo’s Bill Garnock, together with business partner Jamie Wild, is the owner of Feragaia, a distilled zero-abv spirit.
Four years on from launching the drink, Bill and Jamie have opened their own non-alcoholic distillery in Glenrothes.
The move finally puts Bill and Jamie in charge of production of Feragaia, which was previously produced in a distillery in southern Scotland.
And for Bill, who spent much of his decade-long drinks industry career working overseas, it is the realisation of a dream to create his own Fife-made drink – just like those from Cameronbridge.
“When I started going around the world, I could be in a bar in West Texas and see a bottle of Tanqueray and realise that the bottle came all the way from Leven, just like I had,” says Bill, 31.
“I started to realise that as a landscape Fife is right in the heart of the global drinks industry.”
‘People around the world will know and learn more about Fife’
The distillery in Glenrothes houses a copper pot still to distill the 14 botanicals that form the flavours of Feragaia.
At a launch event on Tuesday, guests sampled Feragaia cocktails made with Bill and Jamie’s favourite mixer of tonic and ginger ale.
With production recently passing the 40,000 bottle mark, and sales reaching as far afield as the US and Australia, Bill and Jamie hope to expand Feragaia further overseas.
New markets for the Fife drink will include Switzerland and the Middle East.
The duo are also releasing Feragaia in cans for the first time.
Available from this autumn, the 330ml cans are a mix of Feragaia, tonic and ginger ale.
“I’d like to see Feragaia sit alongside Tanqueray, Gordon’s, Smirnoff, Lindores [Abbey Scotch whisky] and Kingsbarns [Scotch whisky] as one of the long-stay Fife brands that one day hires hundreds of people in Fife and is very much part of the landscape,” Bill says.
“People around the world will know and learn more about Fife.”
‘People used to ask, what’s the point of this?’
Meanwhile, Bill is confident people today have a better understanding of non-alcoholic spirits, which burst on to the drinks scene seven years ago with the launch of Seedlip.
Since then, a host of zero-abv spirits have fought for space on supermarket shelves, including some owned by the giants of Scotch whisky.
Diageo, which owns Johnnie Walker and Talisker among other whiskies, bought Seedlip, while Glenfiddich owner William Grant & Sons makes the 0.5%-abv Atopia.
The influx has helped bring about a change in thinking over non-alcoholic spirits.
“Three years ago, people always asked me, ‘What’s the point of this’?” says Bill.
“And now people ask me: ‘I’ve tried that one, what’s this? What’s this one’s all about?’ Customers are starting to expect better than just a Coca-Cola, lemonade and elderflower.”
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