Isle of Harris Distillery was founded in 2015 by Anderson Bakewell, with a goal that went beyond making whisky: the population of the Isle of Harris had been declining for years as young people left for work. The distillery in Tarbert became the first legal distillery the island has ever known, and consciously reinvests profits back into local employment, training, and community — hence the nickname "the social distillery".
Because whisky must mature for years, Isle of Harris first released a gin: distilled with sugar kelp, a sugar seaweed harvested locally off the coast. That gin financed the wait until September 2018 when The Hearach finally appeared — the first single malt from the island, lightly peated with local Hebridean peat, and sold out worldwide within 4.5 hours.