Toulvaddie Distillery — Highland Single Malt Whisky

Toulvaddie Distillery is a Scotch whisky distillery located at Fearn Aerodrome, on the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland. It was founded in 2022 and is owned and operated by Heather and Bobby Nelson. Toulvaddie is notable as a small, independent micro-distillery built on the site of a former Second World War Royal Naval air station, HMS Owl, and is among the few Scotch distilleries founded by a woman in recent decades.

History

Toulvaddie takes its name from the surrounding farmland on the Fearn Peninsula, an area with a long history of barley growing dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when a traditional four-rowed barley called "bere" was cultivated locally for food, ale and illicit distilling. The distillery's site was previously home to Fearn Aerodrome, an airfield built by the RAF in 1941 and taken over by the Royal Navy in 1942 as HMS Owl, used to operate Barracuda torpedo bombers during the Second World War. The airfield closed in 1946 and the land largely returned to agriculture.

The distillery was founded by Heather Nelson, a former distiller at nearby Glenmorangie who grew up in the local area, together with her husband Bobby. Planning permission and licensing took several years to secure, complicated by the site's wartime history, which required soil investigations before construction could proceed. Building work began with the concrete foundations poured in December 2020, followed by the steel frame in early 2021 and the stills arriving in September 2021. Toulvaddie was fully licensed and began production in 2022, becoming one of the newest working distilleries in the Highland region. The site's design deliberately references both the area's history of small-scale illicit distilling and the servicemen and women who served at HMS Owl.

Quick Facts

• Region: Highland (Easter Ross)
• Founded: 2022
• Owner: Heather Nelson and Bobby Nelson (independent, family-owned)
• Status: Active
• Stills: Two direct-fired copper pot stills (Hoga, Portugal) — 1,000L wash still and 500L spirit still

Core Range

As a very young distillery, Toulvaddie has not yet released an aged single malt whisky; its spirit is still maturing towards a first bottling. In the meantime, the distillery sells its unpeated, floral-style New Make Spirit direct from the site, along with cask ownership and "Founder Membership" schemes that allow customers to purchase a cask of new-make spirit for future maturation into single malt. Toulvaddie plans to periodically produce a peated spirit and to grow its own malting barley on surrounding farmland as production develops.