Tell us a little about your background and journey into distilling

I was born and grew up on St. Martin’s, the island my family has worked for over 330 years, so I’ve spent many happy evenings in the drinking houses across our islands listening to stories of the farmers and fishermen of Scilly, shared over a glass or two of rum - usually drunk with a dash of ‘shrub’.

I also served for 15 years as an officer in the Merchant Navy so I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world and sample many fine rums and vodkas along the way. 10 years of that time was spent working with the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica where I learned to appreciate that a warming tot of good quality rum after a 12-hour shift on the ice was a very good end to each day!

Our family has run Carron Farm on St. Martin’s for over 70 years, initially growing scented Narcissi on the Duchy of Cornwall farm tenancy. My mother and father, Stephen and Julia Walder have supplied milk, beef, fish, and shellfish to the islands, and more recently we developed a facility that enabled us to harvest, produce and supply sea salt, branded SC Salt. 

Image: SC Dogs; Source: Instagram

The idea for SC Dogs distillery came about when I decided to leave the British Antarctic Survey and make a living at home on the Isles of Scilly, following the birth of our third child. At the time I was serving on a ship that had developed engine issues in Aberdeen, whilst returning to base. To kill some time I went on a distillery tour at the ‘Edradour’ Distillery in Pitlochry and that insight into the crafting of spirits sparked my imagination so I started to research what it would take to set up a distillery on the Isles of Scilly.

The aim of SC Dogs distillery is to protect our future livelihoods on the island and give jobs to others but also it’s about supporting other local businesses within the community. Not just on St. Martin’s but across the whole of the Isles of Scilly and particularly the off-islands.

Our family was amongst the first settlers on St.Martin’s, so the idea of community, what it means and the lifeline it can be is in our blood.

Image: Andrew Walder; Source: Instagram

Your current role and what does your day look like?

Days at the distillery here on St Martins can be very varied and sometimes you never know what’s going to crop up. This week I have been mainly rebuilding a 110-year-old granite wall that decided, after a deluge of rain, was no longer going to remain standing. It could be moving the cows to fresh pasture, maintaining the pittosporum hedges rows, splicing back ropes for the pots so they are ready for the start of the season for my Dad’s fishing boat the ‘Lowena’ SC2,  packing orders of handmade sea salt, rum vodka or brandy to send out in the post to our customers through our website shop or dispatching wholesale orders.

If we are distilling rum, which we do on average once a month, I start my day at around 0530 going out to the distillery (which is just outside the backdoor of the farmhouse) to turn on the 500-liter pot still to warm up.

Once the children have been taken to school we set to with taking the foreshots and making the heads cut of the day run and monitoring the still as production commences.  

We generally try to make the best use of the time in the distillery by bottling the next batch of product on our bottling line (sounds grand, we do everything by hand which is pretty labor intensive) and fill a batch into bottles, cork, wax, label, and box up ready to fill orders as they arrive.

Once the cuts have been made for the tails, it is time to catch up on the never-ending mountain of paperwork, fill wholesale orders and collect the next batch of molasses from the Launch (the interisland freight boat that delivers anything and everything that we can’t grow ourselves here on the farm (or catch in the sea!).

Once the tails have been stripped from the batch we drain the still and backfill with the next 500 liters, making the most of the heat in the still saving a little energy for the next day's run. We run 2 x 2000 liter fermenters so a batch takes us 4 days to process giving us our white rum base spirit from which we make our white, gold spiced rum we also lay down spirit in various barrels for our aged editions, the first release of our barrel aged to be released later this year.

What inspired you to become a distiller?

The idea for SC Dogs distillery came about when I decided to leave the British Antarctic Survey and make a living at home on the Isles of Scilly, following the birth of our third child. At the time I was serving on a ship that had developed engine issues in Aberdeen, whilst returning to base. To kill some time I went on a distillery tour at the ‘Edradour’ Distillery in Pitlochry and that insight into the crafting of spirits sparked my imagination so I started to research what it would take to set up a distillery on the Isles of Scilly.

What are some of the most important skills for a distiller?

Maintaining a good team! It is really a family affair. My parents Julia and Steve, and my wife Hannah all support me in the running of the distillery. We get support and assistance from my extended family too – whether that be my cousin James who is a successful winemaker in South Australia, Richard who grew up on St. Martin’s and has led the development of the SC Dogs brand and design work, my uncle as an electrician or my 96-year-old Grandfather (still farming on St. Martin’s!) lending me his Massey Ferguson 135 tractor to prepare the next barley field and his years of experience in growing crops on St. Martin’s.

How do you think a distiller can help in driving marketing and sales personally?

I think it simply comes down to true provenance. All our products are distilled, aged, and bottled on our farm. And the fact that we have managed to create a range of delicately balanced premium rums, vodka, and a Scillonian brandy, and with a whisky on the way, the products do a lot of the talking for us!  

We often use the phrase ‘Crafted by the sea’ – It just means that when we talk about a person or a thing as products of St. Martin’s we are all influenced and formed by the sea that surrounds us. 

We are surrounded by rich stories of people whose lives have been shaped by life on the Isles of Scilly, making a livelihood from the sea and so our strapline ‘Spirits of St. Martin’s means exactly that – premium rums, vodka, and brandy distilled from centuries of Island life on the Isles of Scilly.

Define a good distiller

Definition of a good distiller, well that is an interesting question, when running a small business, to be a good distiller requires you to put on many hats, this is something the people from Scilly have done over the years mastered. You need to be self-sufficient and turn your hand to almost anything; the distilling is the part I most enjoy, creating from scratch products that have the necessary taste profile, quality, and consistency to make it into a bottle, but you also have to be able to turn your hand to website maintenance, accountancy, advertising, PR, HR and most of all knowing when to let someone with more expertise help you!

What is the hardest part of a distiller's job?

For me it’s the paperwork, monthly warehouse returns, quarterly distillery returns, and VAT returns; HMRC does like to pile on the workload, but in the early stages we reached out to the Distillers Alliance and Alan Powel who help set us on the straight and narrow so all the daunting tasks have become much more routine.

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What's your elevator pitch to a bartender when pitching your brand

My name is Andrew, I am the head distiller and owner of SC Dogs Distillery. All our products are distilled, aged, and bottled on our farm. We have managed to create a range of delicately balanced premium rums, vodkas, and brandy with a clean, rounded finish and a tang of the sea!

What are the current challenges the spirits industry is facing according to you?

The rise in the cost of energy has got to be the main challenge at the moment and the knock-on effect that has had on the cost of glass, molasses, and running the still along with cost pressures that bring to bear on everything else.

We are in the process of expanding our distillery, with the addition of a tasting room and retail space, along with a dedicated malting facility to enable the scaling of the production of a single malt whisky from barley grown on our farm. 

As part of this, we are investing in renewable power generation equipment necessary to offset not only some of the cost but also work toward a net zero production throughout our range.

What skill or topic you are learning currently and why?

Aside from the granite stone wall repair I am currently learning some of the basics of malting. We have now run trials of barley growing on our land and have invested in the small combine, the next step is to scale the malting facilities to match our fermenters and still set up for the brewing of a wash for whisky production.

Image: Andrew Walder; Source: Instagram