Jumping from Inverness to the Caribbean, the whisky entrepreneur behind one of the city’s top whisky bars has embarked on an ambitious project by opening the first specialist Scotch whisky bar in the Cayman Islands. opened the doors to his new venture Cask at Camana Bay on Grand Cayman on Friday in a bid to address the growing interest for Scotch on the islands. This comes after the growing success of the Malt Room, , and the opening of their shop Inverness Whisky last year.
A project which was two years in the making, this has been the “biggest challenge” in the Inverness entrepreneur’s career - one which was favoured by a fortunate encounter. “We always thought about opening another bar,” Mr Macpherson explained. “We’ve had the Malt Room for about seven years now, and the next thing on the list for us was to open Inverness Whisky, so that was our next step.
“A lot of people suggested Glasgow or Edinburgh, or somewhere on the West Coast. We thought about it, but we never really got too far with it.“ Then, one day, he received a call from a friend working at Culloden House Hotel, who passed the phone to a customer of the bar who was really interested in learning more about Scotch whisky.
The man on the phone was Rob Eyers, a Cayman Islands resident originally from Inverness who was taking his two sons, who were studying in England at the time, to visit and experience the Highlands. Mr Macpherson said: “I had never met him before, but we started talking and I invited him to have a coffee at Perk and to see the bar - he loved it. “He said that in the Caymans they had a lot of high-end restaurants and bars, and there’s a lot of interest in good hospitality, fine wines, bourbons - but there was no specialist Scotch whisky bar.
” They stayed in touch and became good friends, and later on, it was the turn of the to visit the islands and gauge the interest and feasibility of opening a new bar there. “It’s quite difficult not to like the Cayman Islands,” he said. “You have baby blue water, and it’s just a bit warmer than Inverness.
I really enjoyed my time there. “Although Rob had a lot of local knowledge - also from a business point of view, as his wife Sharron opened a successful skincare shop there - but they needed the whisky and hospitality knowledge.” After a long search, they found a venue at Camana Bay, in what was formerly a radio station, and then the process to convert the unit into a specialist bar started.
“We had to start from complete scratch,” Mr Macpherson said. “My sister Karen helped me design the Malt Room and has also been involved with Perk and Inverness Whisky, and she has been the lead designer on this space too. “The bar is very much designed in a Scottish forest trees theme - dark browns tied up with lighter tones.
It’s the Caribbean meeting Scotland. It’s a beautiful design, the bar is looking fantastic so we are really excited!” The high building standards and shipping constraints (“Amazon doesn’t do next day delivery, you have to wait at least three weeks”) - made this a huge challenge for the team working on the project. The treasure of Cask is, of course, its whisky collection: with 400 different whiskies available by the glass (many from Matt’s personal whisky collection and the Malt Room), it will have the largest Scotch whisky offering in the Caribbean.
He said: “We think it will be super successful. The interest is there and we have hosted some tastings on the island in the build-up. Excitement is high, I think that’s something that has been missing here, so we are excited to bring it to the Caribbean.
” Now, he will spend most of the year in Cayman and come back for a couple of months to catch up with business in the Highlands and family and get a bit of respite from the summer heat. With Malt Room manager John Donaldson still in Inverness, this is a new exciting chapter. “It was an amazing achievement to be named among the top 50 whisky bars in the world, it was a confidence-inspiring thing,” Mr Macpherson said.
“I moved to the Caymans in February so when we shared the news, the team joked that ‘the further I am away from it, the better it does!’. I know it’s in very safe hands.”.
