SCDogs – Delicately balanced premium rums, vodka and brandy all distilled on a family farm on St Martin’s, Isles of Scilly
We caught up with St Martin’s-based business SCDogs Distillery. Business owner and head distiller Andrew shares with us what inspired him start making rum and transform the family farm into SCDogs Distillery.
Premium rum and vodka distilled from centuries of island life in the Isles of Scilly…
Our products with provenance…
I was born and grew up on St Martin’s, the island my family has worked for over 330 years. 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.
After serving as an officer in the Merchant Navy for 15 years, a visit to a distillery in Scotland sparked my imagination – and I started to research what it would take to set up a distillery at home on the Isles of Scilly.
We distilled our first batch of rum in 2019 and five years on, we have produced a range of premium rums, vodka and brandy. During that time, we have also been working on our ‘plough to bottle’ whisky which will be entirely grown, malted, fermented, distilled, aged and bottled on St Martin’s – good things take time!
Our family roots can be traced back to the 1680s on the Isles of Scilly and we have produced scented narcissi, milk and beef from our farm; fished and even produced sea salt over the years.
The idea of community, what it means and the lifeline it can be is in our blood. That’s why we are proud to collaborate with other farms and businesses across the islands and further afield in the production of our spirits. Our cider brandy ‘The Spirit of Jack Hicks’ is made with locally grown apples from St Agnes in a collaboration with Westward Farm, and our whisky barrel aged rum ‘The Spirit of the Lethbridges’ has been produced in collaboration with the RNLI – to raise money for water safety initiatives in across the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall.
We’re currently working hard on our new tasting room and malting floor. Watch this space!
Distilled, aged and bottled on our farm, SCDogs is a range of delicately balanced premium rums, vodka and brandy with a clean rounded finish and a tang of the sea.
You can find our complete SCDogs product range at SCDogs.co.uk
