The original Dornoch Castle was built around the end of the 15th century, although the age of the oldest surviving part of the structure is unclear. It had been a gift from Bishop Robert Stewart to his brother-in-law, the Earl of Sutherland, in 1557, who was tasked with safeguarding the property for the Church from the swell of Lutherans in the Highlands. It never did pass back into the Church’s ownership again. The castle eventually passed to private ownership in 1922, and was renovated into a hotel in 1947. Colin and Ros Thompson acquired the premises in 2000, and along with their sons, Simon and Philip, soon established a reputation for Dornoch Castle as a whisky hotel. The brothers, who began working behind the family bar as soon as they were old enough, began collecting whisky and building up Dornoch’s now enviable collection. It was during their early years at Dornoch that the Thompson brothers fell in love with pre-1960s Scotch whisky. They began bottling their own expressions from sourced stocks – under the Simon & Philip Thompson label – and gradually developed the idea to establish their own distillery on the castle grounds. In 2015 planning permission was granted to transform a former 19th century fire station on the grounds – which was simply being used for junk storage – into a small distillery. To bankroll the project, the brothers put their flat on the market and began crowdfunding, eventually raising enough to begin producing test runs before Christmas 2016. Dornoch distillery laid down ‘Cask 0’ – a test run of single malt spirit – in February 2017, before briefly switching focus to producing its first batch of ‘experimental’ gin, which was released in UK retailers in June 2017.