Why We Bought a Derelict Warehouse Covered in Pigeon Shit

There are easier ways to build a whisky company.

Buying a derelict warehouse with holes in the roof, broken windows, an asbestos roof, weeds growing through the floor and enough pigeon shit to make you question every decision that led you there probably isn't one of them.

Naturally, that's what we decided to do.

We needed somewhere bigger

As Woodrow's grew, we started looking for bigger premises.

We knew we wanted somewhere that could do more than simply give us additional storage. We wanted somewhere that could become part of what Woodrow's actually is - a place where we could mature whisky, hold hundreds of casks, welcome people in and eventually give visitors a chance to see what happens behind the scenes.

So we spent months looking.

We looked at all sorts of options, including a farm in Balerno and land in East Lothian.

There were plenty of sensible possibilities.

And then, one evening, while I was trying to watch television, Woody interrupted me.

“I think I've found something.”

It was 21 MacDonald Place.

The pigeon shit

We went to have a look.

It was... not good.

There were holes in the roof. The windows were broken. Beer cans and pizza boxes were scattered around. There was police tape. Weeds were growing through the floor.

The roof was asbestos and, unsurprisingly, it leaked.

I remember looking around and saying to Kevin:

“It needs a lot of work.”

Kevin replied:

“The more work needing done, the better it is for me.”

That was Kevin.

And, annoyingly, he had a point.

We could see what it could become.

Not what it was.

What we walked into and thought ‘yes, let’s buy this’

Then we lost it

We put in a bid. We lost

Housing developers wanted it, and understandably, the numbers probably looked rather different to them than they did to a couple of whisky obsessives looking at a building full of pigeon shit.

So that was that.

We were disappointed and moved on.

Or at least, we thought we had.

“Do you still want it?”

In November, Kevin casually called us.

The developers' plans had fallen through.

The building was available again.

Though Kevin needed to check whether we still wanted it - but, of course we bloody did.

So we took it.

By January, the keys were ours.

And that's when the fun really started.

The police tape…. we don’t even want to know

From derelict warehouse to whisky warehouse

The next stage was planning, building work and a big effort trying to turn the place into something that humans could safely occupy.

The roof has been replaced.

The floor has been replaced.

The building is starting to look like the place we'd imagined when we first walked through it.

And, importantly, the pigeons have lost their office.

Why this building?

On paper, there were plenty of buildings that would have been easier.

But finding a 6,500-square-foot building anywhere near Edinburgh city centre that could actually work for what we wanted to do was a very different proposition.

We weren't simply looking for somewhere to store casks.

We needed enough space for hundreds of casks, somewhere we could mature whisky properly, somewhere accessible enough for people to visit, and somewhere with the potential to become a genuine home of Woodrow's.

It did feel like searching for a flying pig.

So when we found 21 MacDonald Place, it sort of felt like a well thought out no-brainer.

We could keep looking for the perfect building for another few years, or we could take the building we'd found and make it what we wanted.

Work in progress, new floor, new roof, no smashed window and a much better smell

What we're building

The plan is for 21 MacDonald Place to become much more than a warehouse.

We'll have the capacity to store hundreds of casks on site, giving us somewhere to mature and manage whisky properly as Woodrow's continues to grow.

But we also want people to experience it.

We're developing a tasting room and a warehouse experience where visitors will be able to come behind the scenes and see what independent whisky bottling actually looks like. Not just the polished bottle at the end.

And occasionally the ones where we look at a cask and say, ‘Naw. That's pish’.

Because that's the bit of whisky-making we love.

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There were certainly cleaner buildings that didn't require quite so much work, But we didn't just want somewhere to put whisky.

A place where we can keep doing what we've always tried to do: take the whisky seriously, experiment, learn, argue about casks, reject things that aren't good enough, and occasionally do something completely ridiculous.

The warehouse was a mess when we first saw it.

We're rather fond of it now.

And one day soon, instead of pigeons, beer cans and pizza boxes, there will be hundreds of casks of whisky sitting inside.

We'll take that as progress.