While this is how things looked on Friday 6th, what is becoming far more interesting about the project to create a membership distillery at Ladybank are the real foundations of how we are approaching making whisky as a club.

The foundations are the people we have and how they are behind the project and  interacting with it.

We are having our second members meeting in London this week. These meetings, the first time members have come together to throw ideas around and feed off each others enthusiasm and interest, is inspiring.

Its much more of a “consumers in control” model than many businesses in the past; and for our overseas members we have an Online Boardroom so they can equally engage in the processes we are now going through.

Now that our building conversion is progressing - and there are the early signs of where we will distil, where we will entertain etc - we asked a few local members to come round for an informal meeting. Amongst our current 350 worldwide members just over 10% are based in Scotland and, as we are mostly a small numbers operation, 6 members and a few guests was ideal. We like to keep things kind of intimate and informal as that tends to work best.

Feedback from the members present, who are able to immerse themselves in any, or every, aspect of distillery creation and future whisky making plans, was exceptional. It really does look like we have a growing community of committed, and highly resourceful, people. You can read an article by Ian Green, who also attended, as part of his research into our project.