Noble’s Gaelic strategy ready for stateside launch
By Ian Fraser
Sunday Herald
March 30th, 2003
SITTING in the wood-panelled headquarters of Praban na Linne (The Gaelic Whiskies), Sir Iain Noble takes impish delight in recounting how his whisky company has been a consistent thorn in the side of giants of the drinks trade such as Diageo.
With a log fire crackling in the grate and a spectacular view of the white horses coursing down the Sound of Sleat from his office window, it’s easy to let yourself drift back to a gentler time before such behemoths existed.
Praban na Linne owns three main Gaelic-labelled Scotch whisky brands – multiple award-winning blend Te Bheag, the softer MacNaMara and 12-year-old malt Poit Dhubh. Having started on a small scale in the 1970s, the company already exports to Canada, France and Holland.
Noble is now planning to take America by storm and intends to visit the US next month with a view to finding an importer and a distributor.
Noble, 67, a passionate advocate of the Gaelic tongue, is also looking for a new managing director to help drive the business forward. “Speaking Gaelic would be a help but, if we insisted on that, we might get stuck,” he says.
“We feel that, being a small company, our business is to keep nipping at the heels of the giants.”
Praban na Linne, which Noble founded in 1977 in a bid to regenerate a run-down part of the Highlands currently sells 15,000 12- bottle cases per year. That compares to around 27 million for London-based Diageo – but this does not stop Noble from believing the erstwhile UDV is not eminently defeatable. He says: “Diageo is a colourless drinks giant with a huge portfolio of drinks but no particularly link to Scotland, which makes it rather a soft competitor.”
In the 1990s before the Skye Bridge opened, Noble pulled off a stunt that could have angered Diageo – owner of the Talisker distillery on Skye’s west coast. He confesses to being irritated when at that time UDV was leafleting passengers on the Skye ferry with fliers saying: “Talisker: the only whisky made on Skye”.
He recalls: “I thought that was a bit cheeky so, the following year, the Gaelic Whiskies put a leaflet out saying: “The only whisky company headquartered anywhere in the Hebrides.” Then we sat back and waited to hear what happened.” Nothing did.
However a few months ago Noble – a cousin of the late Johnny Noble, founder of Loch Fyne Oysters – met a senior Diageo executive who told him the issue had gone to the main board, then chaired by Tony Greener. They decided to take no action. “I wish they had,” says Noble. “It would have been wonderful publicity.”
Several of Noble’s other schemes for creating jobs on Skye (including a trawling fleet and a knitwear business) have bitten the dust. But both the whisky business and his Hotel Eilean Iarmain have proved to be survivors. He has also founded and/or co-founded private bank Adam & Company, merchant banks Noble Grossart and Noble & Company and oil firm Seaforth Maritime.
Describing the thinking behind the Praban na Linne’s creation, he says: “We thought if we put Gaelic on the labels, then at least we’d sell it in the Hebrides. We did the labels in Gaelic and fairly quickly people in other parts of the Highlands where Gaelic had died out seemed to want to have the whisky. They didn’t want to lose their association with their Gaelic past. So it started to be sold throughout the Highlands in pubs and hotels. It also appealed to tourists because it had a provenance.”
A French distributor called Francois Dugas – previously an agent for The Macallan in France – later turned up on Noble’s doorstep and asked if he could distribute the brands in France. Noble was at first concerned that Gallic buyers might be bemused by the product’s Gaelic labels, but was impressed by Dugas’ response.
“He said, ‘Did you ever hear of a good Cognac that put English on the label in order to sell it in England?'” Ever since, Dugas has been highlighting the use of Gaelic-language labelling to reinforce the three brands’ authenticity. Noble says: “He’s been very successful. France is now our biggest export market [and it’s] completely thanks to him.”
But what about the UK market? The products are currently distributed in the on-trade in the Highlands and Islands and by the Co-op chain across Scotland but Noble has struggled to obtain listings with other leading grocery chains.
However both Te Bheag and Poit Dhubh have for some years been stocked by Oddbins across the UK. Noble was heartened when, last year, he went into an Oddbins branch in Darlington. “I said, ‘Have you got any really good blended whisky?’ and the manager went behind the counter, said, ‘I would particularly recommend this one,’ and gave me a bottle of Te Bheag.” Noble was delighted.
But he is evasive about the source of the spirit in his Poit Dhubh single malt, which comes in eight, 12 and 21-year- old variants. He says: “You see Poit Dhubh means ‘the black pot’ and poitin in Ireland means a little pot but they both mean colloquially ‘illicit still’.”
“This is proper malt whisky but we are not confirming or denying that it comes from an illicit still. We leave people to their own judgement.”
Te Bheag, whose distinctive taste stems partly from the fact that, unlike most Scotches, it is un-chillfiltered and is a blend of Islay and Speyside whiskies. “We think there’s a reasonable balance,” says Noble. “When people ask how we put the flavour together at the beginning, our standard response is ‘with many headaches’!”
Noble’s next big project is to construct his own distillery which he hopes will be up and running before the end of 2004, three miles southwest of his Eilean Iarmain base. “It will be in an old farm steading which forms a quadrangle around a huge midden.”
“We hope to find a way of getting the distillery going on a fairly small scale to begin with,” he says. “We think we can do it in phases starting small and building up. The way it’s being designed, we could turn it into a full-size distillery that would be bigger than Edradour.
“It won’t be viable in terms of production costs until we reach the big size. It could initially be run as a visitor centre which has whisky as a by-product. There’s a lot of potential, and a tremendous number of nice ideas flying around.”
Copyright 2003 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd
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