Meet Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder and Managing Director

Anthony graciously volunteered his time to speak in-depth about a few distinct and unquestionably delicate issues and subjects related to Kilchoman whisky during an exclusive interview.

You worked as an independent bottler for a few years before developing and operating your own distillery, The Kilchoman Distillery. Would you describe your thought process at the time, and were there any potential risks involved?

The thought process was to be an independent bottler operating at the premium end of the single malt whisky market, buying casks and bottling them as individual casks and selling them around the world. You know, shown me the potential for starting a new distillery. I think one thing that sort of set me on that trail was the fact that getting hold of casks from distilleries was becoming increasingly difficult.

“Why not build my own distillery where we have our own single malt?”

— Anthony Wills

Yeah, the risks were very, very high. There hadn't been a new distillery on Islay for one hundred and twenty-four years. No one thought it was particularly sensible to build another distillery. We had over one hundred in Scotland at the time. There were seven working distilleries on Islay as well, and you know, it's difficult to build a brand, but the enthusiasm and the interest in premium single malt was growing yearly.

On Islay, Kilchoman takes immense pride in being the sole independent farm distillery, I'm curious where the relationship between farming and distilling came from and why you chose to work in this way?

When we decided to build Kilchoman, we needed a uniqueness, and there was, to my mind, no point in building the distillery like every other distillery in Scotland. You needed a point of difference and to showcase distilling in a slightly different way.

Distilling started in Scotland, on small farms around the country, and particularly here on Islay, where there are thirty or so farm distilleries, so farms would grow a bit of barley, and most of it was fed to their livestock, but they also made a bit of whisky. That's really how it developed.

Islay was a very fertile island that could grow good malting barley with a plentiful supply of water. Then the most important ingredient to showcase our whisky differently is the peat that we use for the malting stage. We are a single-farm, single-malt distillery. We grow the barley here on the farm, and do the whole production process aside, and that gives us a point of difference. Everybody's now looking for provenance, traceability, and being able to track the whole process, right from the barley in the field.

So we're immensely proud that we did that, and it put us in good stead as we built Kilchoman as a brand around the world.

I understand the distillery is operated by your family, but could you detail some of the primary responsibilities you and your family members play in the day-to-day of the distillery's operation?

It was never my intention that my sons would come into the business when Kathy, my wife, and I embarked on this project. We were just going to see where it took us, and I think at that point, we employed four or five people. I was doing the distilling, Kathy was running the visitor centre, and then it's grown from there, really.

I was travelling pretty much non-stop from 2007 until 2012–14, just building Kilchoman’s awareness around the world. Now my focus is mainly on production and cask selection and all the bottlings that we do. So I do that and I'm based back at the distillery.

Two of the boys, Peter and James, are based in Edinburgh, and they look after all the sales and marketing around the world. George, the eldest son, is based near Bristol and looks after the UK.

We've expanded the sales and marketing department now. I think there are seven people now in sales and marketing. In total, we employ fifty-plus people, so it's grown very fast and very quickly.

We're delighted with the position we find ourselves in. There's a huge demand for premium single malt, and we've managed to build a brand in a small way around the world, and we're looking to grow on that, and my sons are very much at the forefront of growing the brand.

Can you outline some of the approaches you use to distinguish yourself as a brand from the other Islay distilleries or whisky distilleries in general?

Being an Islay Single Malt has been crucial in the growth of our whisky and, when we sat down to decide where we were going to locate Kilchoman, this was the obvious place. Islay was the obvious place for many reasons.

One was actually my wife's family; they had been coming to Islay all their lives, and Kathy certainly had been coming here. She loved the place. I started coming here in late '78 or '79.

The history of distilling on Islay is huge, and Islay is known around the world for producing some of the best quality single malt whisky in the world. So why wouldn't you locate it here? It's not so straightforward living and working on Islay, but we moved here in 2004 and it was very important that we were based at the distillery, and I think that if you don't base yourself at the distillery you're operating, then it's much more difficult to get things working the way you want them to work.

How hard is it to keep up with trends and develop whisky at the best level possible when your competitors produce new whisky expressions virtually every day?

You have to be innovative, and you have to showcase your whiskies in a different way and in a different manner. If you just do it the tried and tested way, you're going to be left behind.

“We’ve done things that trigger people’s imagination and interest. ”

— Anthony Wills

We're growing barley here and we can look at grain barley varieties and then experiment through the stills, showcasing the different barley varieties in the spirits safe and how they differ slightly. Yeast varieties also showcase that. Then casks, and we do mature in all different cask types. At the end of the day, cask is king, and it plays the biggest part in the character of the single malt you end up drinking.

So finishing, in other words, spending some time in one cask type for a number of years, and then decanting it into another cask type to add another layer of character, is something the industry has done for a number of years. We were doing that, but we're also doing full maturation. Full maturation in different cask types is not something that other distilleries do a lot of; we're fortunate that our spirit character lends itself to maturing in different cask types.

It's great fun to see how our whisky matures in different cask styles because, you know what, everybody likes to talk about different parts of the production process and how much that has an influence on the character of spirit. The cask is the one that plays the biggest part.

We're all talking about things to get headlines in the press, things like terroir and barley varieties and yeast varieties. I've always been a great believer that it's the barley type, and then how you process your whisky while processing in the same way and production methods, but we can tweak things along the way. But the key to every distillery around Scotland is producing consistent character spirit, day-in-day-out, and then letting the cask go to work.

Do you have any concerns with bottle collectors? Or would you rather your whisky be drunk rather than gathering dust on a shelf? Could you please express your thoughts on this?

It's a subject that I'm asked a lot about, and our view, and I'm sure my view is the same as a lot of distillers, is that we make our whisky to be drunk, and you pull the cork and enjoy it.

We don't really want it to be seen being bought by collectors and left to gather dust. We understand that has now become a trend, and I think it's a dangerous trend, because at the end of the day, it happened in wine, where collectors came in and prices were forced up through the roof, then there was a bit of a downturn.

We need to be responsible as an industry. We know that Kilchoman is collected by people around the world, but we hope that they buy two or three bottles, open a few, and then put one away to see how things go. The problem with that is that it's not sustainable. Going forward, though, I would question the motives of some in the industry when it comes to pricing. So we are responsible with our pricing and will always continue to be, and then it's out of our hands as to what happens later on.

Kilchoman is now being flagged as something that people would like to invest in and put away, and one of the dangers I've seen now is that investment companies are now offering casks of whisky to would-be investors to put it as part of their portfolio, hopefully growing investments, and I think it's a dangerous precedent to set. So look, at the end of the day, we are making whisky for people who enjoy drinking it and not to put it on a dusty shelf.

Can you walk me through some of the initiatives Kilchoman takes to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly?

Yeah, we all need to be more responsible, and the Scotch whisky industry and the Scotch Whisky Association are at the forefront of driving sustainability and sustainable practises in the industry and have been for a number of years. We are doing our bit, and we will continue to do our bit and to drive that because it's something that every industry around the world needs to consider and do what they can to have better practises in the distillery.

So you know, like the packaging on our bottles that we send out, we're now making sure that those are more sustainable, the cork and the capsule and the label. Within the distillery itself, we're putting solar panels on our warehouses and we're reusing heat that we generate on the distillery.

So, you know, it's a hot topic, and some distilleries put their heads above the parapet and like to talk about all the things that they're doing. Maybe trying to suggest that others aren't being quite so green as they are. But I think it's a difficult one, because there are some practises that you would argue are sustainable, as everybody believes they are. So we're going to be doing our bit and moving towards more sustainable practices, as we are confident with what we're being offered.

How do you plan for the future of the company, whether it's seeking financing for infrastructure growth and expansion or releasing new bottles and marketing initiatives? Can you outline some of the measures you take and the challenges you face while making such decisions?

One of the things that we haven't considered is the growth of sales, and like every business, certainly in the whisky industry, it's very difficult to forecast from year to year because we are trying to forecast our production ten years down the road as to when the sales will come through.

We should have been producing more whisky at the beginning. We never imagined we'd be in this position where we are, we're selling so much as we are, and we've had double digit growth for about four or five years. So we're trying to address that by producing more, and hopefully, we are ahead of the game, but it's something that everybody gets wrong. No one in the whisky industry gets that right. You have your peaks and troughs, and you're not producing enough, and then you produce loads, and then you slow down because you've got too much in the warehouse.

I appreciate that you don't produce bottles for the sake of it, despite the demand from fans all over the world. But will we ever see an age statement from Kilchoman?

The Age Statement is a hot topic and always a big debate that splits opinion. I think everyone's used to age statements. So we're up until fifteen years ago, and ten years of age was when single malt was acceptable.

I think practises have moved on, production methods have moved on, cask maturation has moved on hugely, and we're seeing whiskies now maturing a little bit quicker, and therefore very palatable at a relatively young age.

We decided, when we released our first single malt in 2009, that three years of age was enough. It would have been ridiculous for us to put three years of age on the bottle at that point. It sort of put you in a price bracket, and if you were trying to sell, which we were with our three-year, our first release, forty-five pounds a bottle, putting an age statement would have probably put people off, or said we were greedy.

They knew it was three years of age; we weren't putting it on the bottle. I think it's very difficult to know where we're going with this in terms of age statements or not. We're now putting more information on labels for our limited releases and our single casks. And we're letting people know the vatting and the makeup and what age it is in our core expressions that are still relatively young. And we don't have any plans to put HMOs on those for the next few years. And we might not. We're waiting to see when we get there. We put as much information as we can on the QR code, where you can go in and find out more information.

But I think what we're trying to do is build a brand on the back of the quality of the whisky, and that people buy for what's in the bottle rather than the age statements on the label.

When selecting bottles for new Kilchoman expressions, can you walk me through the procedures you follow to determine the final product composition?

Is there any experimentation going on behind the scenes, or do you just continue with what has worked so far?

Well, we're always looking for different cask types to mature our spirits in, and we'll continue that. Fortified wine tends to work better, with stronger characteristics coming through, and it doesn't get lost at the lowest range. Red and white wines, which are anything between 12 and 14%, don't tend to have the structure you're looking for.

We fill lots of wine casks, but on the whole, I would say that fortified wines tend to work better. We're always looking for new cask types to showcase our whisky. We've married casks in the big 4000 litre VATs, which we've enjoyed doing, and we've got a release coming up in the autumn 'Casado', which is marriage in Spanish and Portuguese.

It's all about looking ahead to see what we can do, that's slightly different. I mean, we did an ‘Am Bùrach’, which is a mess or cockup in Gaelic. And you know, that's about us telling people that every distillery makes a mistake. With their vatting tanks and mixing two different whiskies, you put them away in casks and leave them for four or five years, and sure enough, you can put out a release.

So we'll continue that journey. I think what we have is a good balance between our core expressions, Machir Bay and Sanaig, which, for every distillery, you know, ten-year-old or twelve-year-old, drives sales and brand awareness, and then behind that, you have the smaller, limited releases. And, as far as I'm concerned, single cask, or cask strength, is something that I'm passionate about. And we're doing more and more of those single casks and cask strengths. And hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll do a cask strength, core expression. But we have to manage our stock. And right at this moment in time, we're having to just be careful not to use up too much of our old stuff. So, you know, when we did a bottling for Fèis Ìle, a sixteen-year old, it was magical to be able to showcase something of that age from Kilchoman, which we never thought we'd get to that stage.

But it's really great that so many people have enjoyed the journey with us, from very young up to something fully mature.

Do you have a dream cask that you haven't yet filled with Kilchoman spirit? And if so, what is it and why?

No, there isn't really! Though, you know, we're not allowed to talk about it, but we're filling some champagne casks fairly soon from France where it's the only place you can call it champagne.

It's also interesting in Tequila, and Mezcal casks have worked exceptionally well. Armagnac, cognac and rum casks you know, it's just fun to see whisky in such different range of characteristics.

We also did a limited release Comriach for the bars around the world, that was tremendous. It was eight years of age, and had just extraordinary balance.

Can you describe Kilchoman to someone who has never had it?

It's soft, it's full-bodied, and it has this lemon and citrus character, and the peat is a soft peat rather than the sort of hit you in the forehead with a sledgehammer type peat. It's well integrated, it's soft, and even at a relatively young age, our whiskies are very approachable.

What can visitors expect when they visit the distillery?

Visitors now have a wonderful experience here because we've built a new visitor centre, which is much bigger than our previous one, and they can do tastings. They can do tours and they can have lunch, they can sit at the bar and taste various expressions of Kilchoman, and I think they have one of the best experiences when they visit the distillery here on Islay.

What do you do to unwind when you're not working? Do you have any passions outside of the company?

I'm a sports fan. So I like the rugby and the cricket, I enjoy fishing and sailing so there's enough to keep you busy there.

Featured