With a background in the international hospitality industry and having been based in New York for the past seven years, I have grown used to travelling and engaging with new audiences.

David Stirling on his role as Brand Ambassador for Arbikie.

With a background in the international hospitality industry and having been based in New York for the past seven years, I have grown used to travelling and engaging with new audiences.

Now I have moved home to Arbikie to join my brothers, John and Iain, in launching the new distillery and building our brand of perfectly nurtured spirits. My role is Brand Ambassador and I feel very enthusiastic about all the new people I am going to meet.

My family combines four generations of farming knowledge with a real passion for the craft of distilling. I am looking forward to introducing our first product, the Arbikie Highland Estate ultra smooth potato vodka, to many people in the drinks industry and consumers.

For me, building the distillery and making our own spirits was “joining of the dots” – pulling together our individual skills and the wonderful natural resources we have in on our farm in the rich and fertile region of Angus.

People have returned to realizing the importance of buying local produce and want to know where their food comes from. Our products have that provenance. At our farm to bottle business we know exactly where everything comes from as we have grown it ourselves. It brings a genuine authenticity to what we do. We are not a multi-national corporation but instead three “real” people who are farmer’s sons and have a real connection and love for our land and what it produces.

Arbikie is a wonderful mixture of tradition and modernity. There is a huge amount of history in Angus and in our estate. Not only have we discovered there was a distillery here in 1794 but the estate once formed part of the King of Scotland’s Royal Estate in the 12th century. Now we are reviving traditional methods of distilling because they provide superb results to produce very modern and exciting spirits.

We believe if it’s not natural and authentic, it’s not Arbikie Highland Estate. That’s why every ingredient we use to make our spirits is chosen with care. We offer great-tasting, high-quality spirits, while striving to act in a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable manner.