Barra will, it is hoped, be an exporter of fine malt whisky.

Eighty years ago this week, on February 4, 1941, a cargo ship ran aground in the Western Isles.
The SS Politician was carrying a cargo of whisky for export.The SS Politician was carrying a cargo of whisky for export.
The SS Politician was carrying a cargo of whisky for export.

When the Isle of Barra lifeboat arrived to save her crew, the lifeboatmen were delighted to learn firstly that nobody had been lost, and secondly, that the cargo of the SS Politician included a quarter of a million bottles of premium Scotch whisky.

The novelist Compton Mackenzie was living on the island of Barra at the time, and was one of the first to taste the Politician’s forbidden fruit.

Mackenzie would go on to immortalise the events of 1941 in his famous book ‘Whisky Galore’. That novel, and its two film adaptations, have kept the public connection between Barra and whisky alive ever since.

Now the island of Barra is offering the world yet another supply of finest whisky, albeit through a more orthodox and natural process.

Uisge Beatha nan Eilean, trading as Barra Distillery, has been selling community benefit shares to progress its journey towards the construction of, and establishing a whisky distillery on the Isle of Barra.

A community distillery, Uisge Beatha nan Eilean will produce a high quality single malt whisky.

Investment is fast flowing in with funding from not only all over Scotland but the rest of the world as the idea seems to have hit home, and it is expected that construction will start later this year.

Barra whisky will of course be exported by sea. We hope that it has a less eventful passage than the cargo, 80 years ago, of the SS Politician.

For further Information, contact Peter Brown at: [email protected] or 01871 810 006.

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