Think of Edinburgh and the city’s striking gothic architecture, sleek townhouses, and curving cobbled streets spring to mind. New Town elegance, the tourist bustle of the Royal Mile, and the dramatic backdrop of Arthur’s Seat. Leith, with its timeworn warehouses and waterways, isn’t always top of the location list, yet its vibrant history of commerce underpins much of the whisky industry. It is here in the late 1700s that wine, port, and sherry imports were landed. Blenders soon set up shop — names from Haig and Vat 69 to Bonnington were all created here at some point. There is good reason why Woven Whisky, one of the newest names on the blended whisky block, found its home in Leith.
“It has to be forward facing as opposed to nostalgia facing,” explains Peter Allison, one of the Woven co-founders, from his Leith studio. It’s a mid-February day, and winter sunlight floods through the warehouse window, illuminating the tiny 6m x 3m space. The Biscuit Factory that houses the part blending lab, part office, part flavour imaginarium is rustic, industrial, and angular. But a vividly creative community nests within the steel girders. Woven’s neighbours include fellow distillers Edinburgh Gin and Old Poison Distillery, Walkie Talky Brewing, a hot sauce company, and even an eyewear brand that makes its products from hemp. It exudes the contemporary.
“We have a huge affection for Leith,” Allison continues. It is fitting to see him in such a forward-looking environment while simultaneously steeped in history. Because, despite the centuries of whisky blending, Woven is a pioneer in this space. Founded by three friends in 2020, the brand is quietly demanding that whisky drinkers take a fresh look at blends.
“For us that means breaking down some of the nonsense about who whisky is for, how it should be enjoyed, and even how it ‘should’ be made,” Duncan McRae tells me over email. The Australia-based co-founder oversees brand, marketing, and comms for Woven.
The trio is rounded out by the commercial-facing Nick Ravenhall. They all met at various stages of their careers, to be brought together formally at Tonbridge-based Atom Brands. “All of our careers and lives have been punctuated by whisky,” Allison muses. The short version of the story is that they realised they shared a fascination with blending, and that holding complementary skill sets could make a business venture viable.
“For us as a brand, it’s about going beyond the making of whisky and creating the experiences in the real world that bring the experience of whisky back to great flavour, moments of connection. And fun!” McRae continues. “Blending feels like the perfect concept for all of this. It’s both our medium and our message.”
Allison is the one that is hands-on with the whiskies, working in the studio every day. He has agreed to let Whisky Magazine join him for an afternoon. “My job is to turn Duncan’s ideas into reality,” he explains, sitting at his cork-board desk. “The concept of each whisky is based around a feeling, memory, a time, a social occasion.” The drink “anchors it”, he says. Ideas start in a shared Google doc, slowly coming to life through casks, beakers, and pipettes. Almost every surface in the space either does, or could, hold notes. Surrounded by ideas, reference points, labels, either pinned up or scribbled on a blackboard, it’s as close as one could get to being inside someone else’s mind. “I enjoy the formulation of things into something that is tangible,” he states.
Looking at a Woven bottle gives a sense of what he is trying to capture. Names of blends include Shindig, Synchronicity, and Catalyst. Label designs give a visual representation of the flavours and aromas held in the simple, pebble-like bottles. To be inside this world is to marvel at the possibilities of flavour combinations,
to wonder at the potential of a singular cask sample. However, this isn’t representative of mainstream blends — or the clouded perceptions many have of blended whisky.
“Many of the blended whiskies you get on the supermarket shelves taste nice,” Allison explains. Typically sweet and light, with a little bit of spice. But it is a race to the bottom. “What blending commonly has become is [creating] that flavour profile at the cheapest price point. It’s done incredibly well.” Woven, he insists, isn’t about saying this approach to blending is bad, but he does see a lack of innovation. “There was quite an obvious opportunity for us to step into that.”
So, what is Woven? “We wanted to create a brand and a proposition that was minimal, tactile, minimalist, and a little bit utilitarian on the surface,” he details. “As soon as you start picking at the surface, you’re able to get to these layers of information and story around the blends. What’s in them and how we made them, and why we made them. It’s all of these different concepts and quite big thinking.”
The bottle is at the heart of the brand identity and really speaks to this. It’s surprising to learn that rather than the result of an exacting design process, it’s actually a Boston round, the most common bottle in the world.
“It’s essentially used for the bulk storage of medicine,” Allison explains, holding the 500ml format in his hand. And because it is amber glass, the percentage of recycled material is as high as 63 per cent. “It’s also incredibly light,” he adds, noting that the bottle uses around 30 per cent less glass than a conventional whisky bottle of the same size. Woven doesn’t make any huge sustainability claims, but these baked-in principles can make a significant difference.
Back to the whisky. Another striking facet of Woven is that Allison has never before held a hands-on production role. “My initial background had been in making drinks and my mum had restaurants. So, I’ve always been around flavour and food,” he details. “I started working in bars before I left school, so I’ve always had to balance drinks. That’s just been something I’ve done for more than half my life now.”
In the early days the team bought as much whisky as they could and, in many ways, figured it out as they went along. “We didn’t have any money for a blender,” he says, moving over to the blending area set up against the opposite wall. “Duncan and I initially started with honestly just a pipette and putting together combinations in a glass.” The question was whether it could be scaled.
“For the first collection we put together a couple of little philosophies that have really held true. One is that flavour follows texture. So, we blend the texture first, then try to add flavour.” First, balance a base of grain and malt. “Then you start to understand what direction it’s going to go in.” He likens this to the differences between how cold and room-temperature water feel and taste.
He pulls some samples to illustrate further — a simple grain and malt combination. The labels on the sample bottles are beautiful: all uniform, yet a code on the top and spider diagram representative of each one’s flavour set them apart. It is another design detail that shows how important aesthetics are to the team.
Everything starts here at the bench with tiny volumes, but replicating those blends at hundreds or thousands of litres presents a technical challenge. “There was quite a lot of trial and error,” Allison admits. “I’ve got an OK understanding now.” It takes about 100 hours to work on a blend at macro level, he says. Then samples go out to the team, which includes two finance-based backers that he considers founders. (“We love them very much, they’re as part of Woven as anybody is.”) If a sample passes the ‘is it yummy?’ test, a five-litre test batch commences. “There’s a huge leap of faith at that jump. I think that if I was working in a commercial blending house then I would be able to understand it a lot better. But really, I’ve just been able to track it from being a 5ml, 10ml glass up to three or five litres.” He tells one tale of a “disaster” where a vatting cask at the final stage imparted too much flavour. “It’s still a lovely whisky,” he says, transparently grabbing the bottles for a taste. The earlier sample and the final product are very different, but he’s right. It’s another distinct, delicious Woven expression.
We take a walk to go and check on some casks that the team have maturing at the nearby Lind & Lime Distillery. He checks on vattings regularly to make sure a similar “disaster” doesn’t happen again. The lack of space means that Woven works with a lot of third-party makers, but this could look slightly different soon. The team is in the process of looking for a larger site. One location already fell through — but soon it will time to say be goodbye to that stunning window and the little studio. “We want to build out a facility where we’re able to do some small-scale blending,” he says. “We’re looking to experiment a lot more with our production processes. And so we do need a sort of a pilot, blending house people to do that.” A new hire is starting soon, too.
Walking through the streets of Leith, so steeped in history, it feels profound to be with a blender so forward facing. Allison speaks at length about how he sees Woven’s place as being similar to that of natural wines and coffee. There’s a lifestyle synergy, one that feels consistent with recent partnerships with a baker as well as Scottish fashion designer Kestin Hare.
“What’s happening in coffee and wine right now is that there’s a third wave of producers,” he details. In terms of wine, that’s old world, new world, and now something completely fresh. “They’re taking different production processes and incorporating them into wines at a smaller scale, they’re being much more experimental, and their communication and visual language is much more tailored for the contemporary consumer.” He pauses. “Big flavours don’t necessarily need you to be an expert. You can come into it and go, ‘Oh, actually, I like that’.”
He is passionate about making sure the way flavour is discussed is as approachable as possible. “There’s a simple formula that I think is true. And that’s flavour plus experience equals accessibility,” he says. “Bringing people into whisky through good flavour plus an experience.” That could be anything from tasting Woven at a Paris Fashion Week show or simply holding the bottle.
At Lind & Lime, Allison is delighted with the development of the spirit in cask. It’s almost ready to go, he says, perhaps with a small sense of relief. The near future for that release is set. But there are some whiskies on his wish list for further down the line.
“The most striking difference for us is that our main focus is to blend world whiskies together with Scotch,” he opens. He gives Hemispheres as an example, a bottling in the core range. Grain from Scotland is blended with manuka-smoked single malt from New Zealand — something that could never be created in Scotland due to Scotch Whisky Association rules.
“Blending across borders has been really important for us as a business,” he continues. “We didn’t set out to do that.” It came through a series of relatively unexpected circumstances, being able to acquire parcels of whisky for not much money. Liquid from India is on his radar. He would also love to get his hands on some “old-school” blending malts from Scotland, but is realistic that it may not be possible. “There’s loads I’d love to play with,” he says. “But I think that we’re just incredibly lucky to be able to explore different categories, different styles, different distilleries. And although we don’t have access to everything, what we are able to do is to be as curious as possible.” That is exactly what he is making at Woven: whisky for the curious.
