Sitting outside the pub in Partick, cradling a glass of rum as the sun starts to dip behind the tenements. It’s a crisp, satisfying drink infused with full on flavours, real ingredients and spices.
“When we were developing the recipe, we took a spiced rum and stripped it right back down and built it back up again. There’s heaps of fresh ginger in there, fresh lime peel, orange peel, nutmeg, cardamom, vanilla, cloves, a few other spices as well” Zander Macgregor explains. He set up Wester Spirit Co with his friend Allan Nairn and a sense of adventure, setting out to rekindle independent distilling in Glasgow.
Their story shows how parts of the city can foster and encourage new ideas and businesses. Partick is buzzing with a creative spirit right now: wee quirky shops, distinctive restaurants, bars with personality, art studios, workshops. Wester took inspiration from that emerging scene. Now, you can add a rum brand to the heady neighbourhood mix.
Zander is originally from the North-West of Scotland, he says – “have you heard of Ardnamurchan?”. He came down to Glasgow for university when he was 18 and has been here ever since. There was some travelling and a few jobs after graduation. Last year he found himself setting up his own business.
“It’s just happened. About eight months ago. I always wanted to run my own business. Myself and my friend Alan were chatting. We both like rum. We came up with a few ideas and that’s grown into what Wester is now. It feels like it has happened quite naturally”.
“We spent some time looking at the industry as a whole, to see if it could be done. It came to a point where we just pulled the trigger on it and got up and running properly the best way possible. And look at where we are now!”
Things are moving to the next stage for Wester. “We currently distil at Strathearn Distillery up in Perthshire. We’re about to sign a lease on a unit just down in Meadow Road, to distil there. That’s hopefully going to happen in the next couple days”.
“We worked with the guys at Strathearn to develop the recipe. We made a rum up there, then we brought the base rum down here, and we started spicing it. Different weights of all the different spices. Some were mad experiments, others were more in line with what we thought would work well.”
“We would take the rum to some local house parties and things like that. Get as much feedback as we possibly could. That gave us the basis for what is the Wester rum flavours. Opening a distillery down the road here, near where I live, it feels like we’re bringing everything together where it belongs.”
Glasgow has a long history as a distilling city. “They’ve made rum here. They’ve made whisky. They probably distilled just about everything, pretty much, back in the day.
“So, it’s good that the Clydeside Distillery has just opened up, and others that are bringing this to the attention of more people, the history of distilling in Glasgow”.
“From 1650 to 1750, for about a century, they were making rum in Glasgow when there was a big sugar boom. There were about four or five sugar refineries that would also run distilleries. There was a Wester sugar house. There was an Easter sugar house. There were a couple of others around the city as well.
“So that’s where the name Wester comes from, from the Wester Sugar House Company, which was a sugar refinery just this side of Gallowgate, in the Candleriggs area.”
Zander and Alan will be personally in charge of the distilling process at the new Meadow Road premises. Right now, they make around 250 bottles of premium spiced rum a month. They plan to grow production to include a golden rum and a white rum.
There will also be a collaboration arm of Wester. “We’ve made an ale as a collaboration with Drygate. We’ll be using our Ampersand label to work on experiments, rum aged in peated, smokey casks or interesting bottles. We might work with a whisky company on a crossover”.
For the rest of the year, the focus for the company will be on Glasgow. “The idea is to make Glasgow a real home for the brand and to have it in every pub.”
“We want it to become the go-to spirit for the bartenders. We’ll look at having events going on in the distillery all the time, maybe a few gigs. Make Glasgow the heart of what Wester is all about.”
“Once that’s happened, once we achieve that, then it’ll be a case of looking further afield. Still keep everything going in Glasgow but just start approaching other places across the central belt, the rest of Scotland, the UK, and then a few export markets as well.
You’ll already notice Wester bottles around town. “It’s been really well received so far. The guys up at Dukes bar are bashing through some really interesting cocktails with it. We’ve done a few bar tastings, places like Cafe Gandolfi. The Good Spirits Co on Bath Street was our first stockist”.
We focus back on the glasses of rum on the table. “With Wester, we tried to make it so you can just sip away at it, with some ice, maybe a wedge of lime. It’s smooth enough that you can enjoy it slowly.
“Or try it with a bit of ginger beer and some fresh lime. Or experiment with it. Try it in a few cocktails. Hot apple pie punches in winter for instance. Rum old fashioneds. It adds quite a lot of flavour to a cocktail. It’s not just a flavourless spirit. Rum is a diverse drinks category.”
Part of the process for us will be to get people to try the rum and understand what we’re all about. When you add it to a cocktail, you can actually taste some of the spices and things like that coming through. Which is quite nice actually.”
What about those ingredients, then. How do you go about sourcing molasses and vanilla in Partick? “Most of the spices are quite readily available. We use a couple of different suppliers to make sure that they’ve always got them. They’re good quality. They’re all-natural. They’re always quite consistent.”
“We don’t use a huge amount of vanilla but it’s gone up by about 500 percent or more in price and there’s a worldwide shortage. For the last batch we made, trying to find the vanilla was quite a mission. All the suppliers were out of stock so I had to pay over the odds on eBay”.
We return to the fact that Wester will soon be moving into Meadow Road. You’re all invited.
“It’s nothing fancy. We have the space that we need, and we’ll try to make it as interesting as possible. We’ll get some artists in. Do some murals in the wall. Get some good lighting, because the kit looks good. It’s all stainless steel – 2000 litre fermenters and then a 500 litre still.”
“If someone wants to come and see what we’re up to then they can have a look around. We’ll have an open doors policy.”
“There’s a really vibrant cultural scene in Glasgow. We want to tap into that and work with all the local businesses around Meadow Road to try and make that a hub of independent producers. Glasgow has a fantastic bar scene too. Hopefully people will want to try new things, and Glasgow rum can make a name for itself as a good quality spirit.”
Look for Wester Rum in bars and independent off-licences in Glasgow, including The Good Spirits Company, Peckham’s, Marchtown and the Wee Beer Shop on the Southside.
For more information, visit the official website here.