As their name suggests, brothers Simon and Phil Thompson are the founders of Thompson Bros, a well-known independent bottler and owner of the Dornoch distillery, located next to the castle of the same name on the east coast of the northern Highlands.
They were first introduced to whisky at a very (very) young age in the castle bar run by their parents, where they fell in love with the old-fashioned style of whisky, and from there their passion grew until they opened the (tiny) Dornoch distillery in 2017 in an abandoned fire station next to the castle. Recovering old barley varieties, long fermentations, slow distillation, minimal and totally manual production are the main features of the distillery, which was soon followed by the establishment of the label as independent bottlers and, in the near future, the construction of a second distillery, Struie, whose crowdfunding is still ongoing at the time of writing.
Thanks to the intercession of their Italian importer, Fine Spirits, I had the pleasure of having a long chat with one half of the Thompson Bros: below is the video of the interview with Simon, with just a brief introduction in Italian.