“The whole concept of the Abhainn Dearg distillery is to come from the fields of the Western Isles to the bottle – we want the whole product eventually to be done out in the west here,” says Marko Tayburn when asked about his Hebridean distillery.

“The Western Isles is the biggest island chain in Scotland, and one of the things I’ve always felt we’ve been lacking is a distillery.”

The Abhainn Dearg (Gaelic for Red River) distillery in Uig on the Isle of Lewis, opened in August 2008 and its first batch of single malt will be ready on time for the Royal National Mod which is coming to the island in 2011.

Described as the most westerly distillery in Scotland, owner Marko has a vision of self-sufficiency for his small farm distillery: “We want all the products, all the raw ingredients, to come from the Western Isles – the peat, the water, the barley and the fertiliser.”

Being the proud owner of the island’s first ever combine harvester, Marko has been busy trialling barley on the island: “We grew about five tonnes last year and we successfully malted that.

“The distillery uses about 50 tonnes a year of malting barley and the bulk of the barley, comes from the north of Scotland, again supporting Scottish farmers. Within, I would hope five years, we would like to raise all that barley in the Western Isles and then we could increase our production.

“A lot of people say ‘oh you can’t grow that on Lewis’ and I say to them, not that long ago this island was almost self-sufficient and I don’t see why we can’t go back to that.”

He jokes: “You spend more time taking the header off the combine than you do actually cutting the barley; it’s not very often you see a combine in a croft!”

A firm believer in buying local produce, Marko uses local seaweed as fertiliser for his barley: “We’ve got a deal with the local seaweed company on the island, and they’ve dried seaweed and powdered it for us.

“It’ll pass through the seed drill with the barley. We could have put raw seaweed onto the land in winter but it’s a lot of work and if we’ve got to drill the seed anyway, we’re as well putting it in the hopper with the seed so that the seed goes in directly with the barley.”

He said that although there is plenty of land available for growing barley, their main problem is storage of the grain: “We’ve turned back quite a lot of ground this year because we haven’t got the facilities to dry and store it. We’re hoping to buy a grain drier and are looking for more storage space for the grain.”

They have already made a highly popular batch of new spirit called The Spirit of Lewis, with a limited supply of bottles nearly all sold out and a cask having been sent to MacSorley’s Bar in Glasgow.

“What MaSorley’s are trying to recreate is a dram the bar had under their own name a number of years ago, called The Peacemaker. So they’re trying to re-establish the link with the Hebrides,” Marko explains.

“The bar used to be very popular with people from the Highlands and Islands, so the Abhainn Dearg spirit is their link to the Hebrides.”

As well as running the distilling side of things, Marko keeps a small fold of Highland cattle and offers distilling courses: “We were kindly donated an illicit still and what we offer is a hands on course on how to make spirits the way it was done before it was mechanised and before it became industrialised – just to give people a hands on feel.

“Anyone who has a wee bit of an understanding of Gaelic will know that, all you’ve got to do is grab a map of the islands, including the Uists and Barra, and you can see a lot of place names including rivers and houses in Gaelic and they all refer to distillation.

“Let’s be honest here, go back a couple of hundred years – we were living off the land, we didn’t have Tescos or any of these places and if there was a surplus of whatever – corn, oats, barley – I reckon they would have done an alcohol run.”

On his small fold of cattle who have graced many photos alongside casks of whisky, Marko says: “We’ve got about six breeding, and I like Aberdeen-Angus highland cross because they’re tasty.

“Because of the amount of draft we produce at the distillery I don’t have a lot of feed but we’ve also got by-products from the barley, and the Highlanders will eat almost anything. It’s an Angus bull that we have, and I think that’s the right cross for the table.”

So what does Marko aim to achieve within the next five to ten years?

“Just to be self-sufficient in Hebridean barley and to have a good stock of single malt and enjoy drinking it.”