My first job was in whisky, my dad used to love Scotch and on Sunday mornings when I was seven or eight years old, I would get one or two rupees to dust my dad’s study, including his amazing collection of whiskies and Cognac. I also always had the nose – when I was growing up, my friends would put pencils under my nose and I could tell which brand of pencil it was. I’d come home from school and the moment I walked in the door I could tell what my mother had cooked for lunch.” 

On 31 December 2022, Dhavall Gandhi, one of the most celebrated whisky makers in the world, left his position as master blender and director of whisky & spirits operations for The Lakes Distillery, closing the curtains on not just an important five-year chapter for the Cumbrian distillery but English whisky in general. 

The following day Dhavall Gandhi Whisky was officially born, a project self-described as “private banking for the whisky consulting world” and the latest move in a career spent pointed towards creative freedom. 

“If I had to distil my brain and my skills and just do what I think I’m really good at, it would be what I am doing now,” says Gandhi.

Following an undergrad in corporate finance and economics in the States, Gandhi took work as a consultant at Ernst & Young before a realisation on the steps of a distillery in Kentucky changed his course. 

“At Ernst & Young I missed using my hands and using my mind, it was intellectually pushing, but Microsoft Excel was my best friend,” he says. 

“We were in Kentucky for a client engagement, and we decided to go on a distillery tour. It was there at Maker’s Mark I realised that what I wanted to do in my life was to make whisky. Leaving the high-paid world of management consultancy behind, Gandhi and his wife packed up and moved to Scotland and a post-graduate degree in brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University. 

“After graduating, I worked with Heineken, which was previously Scottish Newcastle, as the technical manager for western Europe area. There I learned a lot about operations, whether that’s running a 16 million hectolitre brewery or understanding yeast and fermentation.” 

Then came the opportunity at The Macallan to realise his ambition to become a whisky blender. 

“With Macallan, I got to go much, much deeper into blending and maturation and really look at understanding sherry casks. I also admired Macallan for the way it thinks. There are many amazing whiskies out there, but it is the brand that is synonymous with luxury.” 

RISING STAR

During his tenure at The Macallan, Gandhi became one of whisky’s bonafide rising stars, a new breed of cerebral whisky scientist working at the category’s most exclusive brand. It raised a few eyebrows when, in 2016, Gandhi joined a then little-known distillery across the border in England of all places.

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“One of the things that attracted me was that [former chairman at The Lakes distillery] Alan Rutherford gave me complete carte blanche when I joined the distillery. 

“The Lakes was the most exciting time for me from a creative perspective because that’s where I applied all three areas of my career. I did a lot of strategy work, at least from a stock perspective, and that came from my finance background. 

“There was also a lot of distillation and operations running as the master distiller and the whisky director, which came from my Heineken background. And then the creative whisky making side came from The Macallan. And there I formed my own style.” 

During his time at The Lakes, Gandhi oversaw the growth of the distillery from an output of 100,000 litres to 400,000 a year. He also produced a number of hugely successful releases, including the highly acclaimed Whiskymaker Reserve series. 

“There is a quote, ‘write the book that you want to read’, and for me, The Lakes Whiskymaker Reserve is the whisky that I wanted to drink. I’m very proud of what we have done, we weren’t trying to be different, we were just trying to be ourselves.” 

CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

The internal logic to each step that Gandhi has taken is given a satisfying sense of resolution with Dhavall Gandhi Whisky, marking a return to the management consultancy where his career began. His new work sees him take on the role of a one-stop shop for creative whisky solutions. 

“I’m doing some bespoke whiskies, which are creative dream projects. One is for a very rich person who made a lot of money in technology. He wants me to create a bespoke whisky for a party that he throws every year at his house in Europe. The budget is ‘I want something that none of my friends can get anywhere’ and so I’m looking at very, very old stocks and some rare stuff. 

“A lot of our work is stock transformation. I have distilleries that have started in the past five to 10 years that might have hired a distiller but don’t have a greater strategy about cask policy. Then, when it comes to taking a whisky to market that is recognisable to consumers, it becomes quite difficult. But also financial institutions that invested in casks or big distilleries with leftover stock that haven’t used the right cask at the right time or sourced the right cask. 

“And I’m doing creative whisky making as well. But what is important here is that whoever I engage with as a consultant, it is me and my team that take full creative control. I’m still working as a whisky maker at The Lakes, for example, but as a consultant, so I’m still doing the fun stuff but I’m no longer involved with health and safety or operations. 

“When you’re working on one project, you might learn something that can be applied to a problem somewhere else. It keeps you mentally active, your brain is always fired up with new ideas.” 

Gandhi’s clearheaded ambition towards creative control has been an admirable constant in a varied career, now with Dhavall Gandhi Whisky, he has given himself the opportunity to lean on everything that he’s worked so hard for. 

“Freedom is important so you can be more creative, so you can have an undiluted pure manifestation of your creative thoughts. I remember even when I was at Heriot-Watt, when others weren’t sure about their future, I knew from day one that I wanted to be a blender. Sometimes I’m blessed with that clarity.”