THE story of Lochindaal started in 1995 when film director Ken Hyman of the Hill and Dirty Dozen fame, who lives in SKirmett was fishing a Scottish river, warming himself with the local tipple.>

Whisky lovers develop a new brand

Picture shows Derek Hayward (left) and Trevor Wrenn

THE story of Lochindaal started in 1995 when film director Ken Hyman of the Hill and Dirty Dozen fame, who lives in SKirmett was fishing a Scottish river, warming himself with the local tipple.

Back in Bucks he decided to see if his dream for a definitely quality Malt Whisky could become a reality. So he contacted his friend and international TV commercials maker Trevor Wrenn from Lane End, who in turn introduced Ken to whisky expert and current chairman of the Slug & Lettuce chain, Tim Thwaites, who lives in Parmoor, Frieth.

It wasn't long before the quartet was complete with the addition of Derek Hayward, an ex-director of White Horse who lives in Bourne End, as a consultant.

Derek soon knocked on the head the idea of a blended whisky because of the fierce competition in the marketplace. So the search was on to find a product that was sufficiently different, not used before and could be sold at a reasonable price.

A year went by of intensive searching, even more intensive tastings before they settled on a ten-year old Single Malt from Islay.

"Searching out this outstanding malt took a great deal of time, but I could not say it was hard work and sacrifice," said Tim.

The next step was to find a name for the whisky. That gave the quartet their biggest problem, and many long of often heated discussions.

"Everyone has their favourite name," recalled Derek. "The distillery was on the banks of Lochindaal, the most westerly distillery in Scotland. We found to our delight nobody had ever registered that brand name."

They immediately registered it for the UK and subsequently for the whole of Europe.

The final step was to find investors from among the four directors' friends and relatives and choose a company name.

To their astonishment the name Associated Distillers was available and the company is now owned by 30 people, including the four directors and two non-executive directors. They are mainly locally based and are all linked together by a love and enthusiasm for Malt Whisky.

"Our philosophy is to work out of the Thames Valley and to move out from there," said Derek.

"We already have a customer in Leeds and Scotland is on our hit list."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.