Meet the Auckland-born whisky maker taking on Scotland\u2019s strictest traditions.<\/p>\n
\n After a stint in the New Zealand Navy after high school, Nick Ravenhall (Tapuika) realised a career in combat perhaps wasn\u2019t his future. Instead, the Aucklander turned to hospitality, working in a series of bars where his love for whisky
\n was ignited.\n <\/p>\n
At Ponsonby Rd\u2019s The Whiskey bar, he realised \u201cno one really knew anything about anything\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur customers coming in thought whisky was just bourbon or Jack [Daniel\u2019s], and we were trying to peddle single malt,\u201d Ravenhall says. \u201cBut we had this duty manager who would pull out a bottle every Friday or Saturday night and open it up and try to teach us kids what single malt was all about. And that was where it all started [for me].\u201d <\/p>\n
Ravenhall is the co-founder of Woven Whisky, an Edinburgh-based business creating groundbreaking bottles of blended whisky.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2020 with his friends Peter Allison and Duncan McRae, Woven Whisky was born from the trio\u2019s complementary experience in the industry, and a desire to revisit the much-judged category of blended whisky.<\/p>\n
Woven Whisky’s co-founders, Pete Allison, Duncan McRae and Nick Ravenhall.<\/p>\n
In the six years since the business started, they have already made waves in the industry, ruffling feathers not only with their blended product but also in their attempt to trademark the previously contentious term \u201cPure Malt\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Woven team was hauled in front of the famously rigid Scottish Whisky Association for an explanation on what, exactly, they were doing in their warehouse in the waterside neighbourhood of Leith.<\/p>\n
Their decision to trademark the term \u201cPure Malt\u201d came a few decades after the term was surreptitiously used by the premium drinks brand Diageo. In 2003, Diageo quietly discontinued Cardhu single malt and replaced it with a blended malt using the same label and bottle, labelling it a \u201cpure malt\u201d.<\/p>\n
Other whisky makers cried foul and accused the brand of using a misleading description \u2013 \u201cpure malt\u201d suggested the whisky was a single malt when, in fact, it was blended.<\/p>\n
Diageo ultimately discontinued the product, relaunching Cardhu\u2019s single malt. The controversy ultimately led to a change in regulations around Scottish whisky and a ban on the term Pure Malt.<\/p>\n
By comparison, Woven Whisky\u2019s use of the term is almost factually correct; the term is used to label the Kiwi team\u2019s blend made exclusively from various single malts sourced from around the world, marrying a classic Speyside single malt with liquid from Australia, Taiwan, and India. Purely single malt \u2013 just not Scottish single malt.<\/p>\n
Ravenhall laughs when he recounts this story, one that perfectly represents this slightly maverick whisky brand, led by a series of whisky professionals who are set on bending the industry\u2019s often firm framework. Or, as they say in the description for Pure Malt, \u201ca new, borderless future for whisky\u201d. <\/p>\n
Woven Whisky has been making waves in the industry with its blended products.<\/p>\n
\u201cBorderless\u201d is also a good description of Ravenhall\u2019s career path. From Auckland, he moved to Perth to play sport, bartending on the side, where he met a Diageo rep who changed the course of his career path entirely. <\/p>\n
Taking a job as a Diageo merchandiser, he would travel the city setting up \u201cBundy and cola displays\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I had a great boss, and I talked to him about what I wanted to do, and everything for me was just obsessively whisky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Admitting he wanted to become a distiller and learn how to make whisky, Ravenhall\u2019s boss moved him to Scotland, where he was given a field sales role in the Perthshire and Tayside regions, an area full of distilleries.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, Ravenhall had a front row seat to some of the best producers in the world and, on his admission, did hardly any work. Instead, he \u201cdrove to a bunch of distilleries, just being a bit of a pest really.\u201d<\/p>\n
His approach paid off; Morrison Bowmore offered him an export role selling into a region that covered Scandinavia, Russia, the Baltic states and the Balkans, which saw him travelling regularly<\/p>\n
And, as the classic Kiwi overseas story goes, he met a girl in Oslo, fell in love, and moved to Norway.<\/p>\n
He spent five years there working for a company that was an importer of some of Japan\u2019s best single malts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite a good education, not living in an Anglo country,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think I was one of only three M\u0101ori in the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n
After five years, the opportunity arose to move back to London with online retailer Master of Malt on its brand side, Atom Brands. Here, he was finally brought together with Woven co-founders Duncan McRae and Peter Allison, whom Ravenhall brought on to the team at Atom Brands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of where the first seeds of Woven started,\u201d Ravenhall says. \u201cDuncan and I had worked in bars when I first moved to Edinburgh, and we were the only people who were drinking whisky at staffies \u2013 everyone else was drinking agave or super cool rums, and we were like the Dungeons and Dragons kids in the corner. <\/p>\n
Woven Whisky’s Pete Allison, Nick Ravenhall and Duncan McRae.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d always talk about making and blending, especially as we were both living in Leith at the time, which is historically the home of blended whisky in Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trio were drinking some samples after work one day, and as Ravenhall says, \u201cchatting crap about the whisky business of dreams\u201d, when the idea for Woven first bobbed up. <\/p>\n
At first, the idea was to \u201cask the question around why these ideas around blended whisky making don\u2019t represent quality and deliciousness\u201d.<\/p>\n
They wanted to open conversations in the whisky industry around perceptions of the drink; the idea that a single malt is superior to a blended whisky, and testing the boundaries of whisky\u2019s rigid limits.<\/p>\n
Take, for example, the fact that anything Woven blends that includes international liquid has to be done across the border in Northumberland \u2013 it\u2019s illegal to blend a whisky in Scotland if the liquid isn\u2019t 100% Scottish. It\u2019s something that would require government legislation to be changed, and costs the company tons in time and petrol money.<\/p>\n
Woven Whisky, co-founded by Kiwi Nick Ravenhall, is creating groundbreaking bottles of blended whisky.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really here for people who want to share whisky, and have a good time, and drink something of quality,\u201d Ravenhall says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt the whisky industry had really lost touch with the customer, releasing these ridiculously expensive bottles that people don\u2019t have access to and then jacking the prices up on releases that then the quality doesn\u2019t match the promise.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we decided to put the customer front and centre, and the experience front and centre. But then we were like, okay, well, we\u2019re kind of the customer, so, what do we like to do? We like to discover yummy things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growth was slow and steady.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had odds and sods, these ingredients that we were just kind of blending together and then putting out as a collection of four at different price points … from easy, approachable drinking to complex, old whiskies and a mish-mash of stuff in the middle,\u201d Ravenhall says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did that four times and had 16 recipes, so every time it would be like blend, bottle, run out of money, sell the s*** out of it, get it back in, go get some more money, and then do another series.\u201d<\/p>\n
After two years, they got to a place of confidence in what they were making and \u201cturned our hands to a permanent expression\u201d.<\/p>\n
That now looks like a series of dynamic blended whiskies that capture the Woven ethos: delicious, high-quality blended whisky from Scotland and abroad.<\/p>\n
Woven Whisky’s Hemispheres blends Thomson Manuka Smoked Single Malt from Thomson Whisky in Auckland\u2019s Riverhead with a single grain from North British Distillery in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
One that\u2019s particularly close to home for Ravenhall is the Hemispheres release, which sees Thomson Manuka Smoked Single Malt from Thomson Whisky in Auckland\u2019s Riverhead, blended with a single grain from North British Distillery in Edinburgh; a liquid marriage of Ravenhall\u2019s two worlds.<\/p>\n
He rhapsodises about Thomson\u2019s Manuka-smoked whisky and this blend in particular, with the manuka smoke giving it a genre-bending herbaceousness that often perplexes even the most educated of industry insiders.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just one leading light in a growing New Zealand whisky scene that was labelled the world\u2019s most exciting by Food & Wine Magazine in 2025.<\/p>\n
And the growth in our local distillery industry has been the signal to Ravenhall that it\u2019s time to come back to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Woven Whisky co-founder Nick Ravenhall is being encouraged to return by the growth of NZ’s whisky scene.<\/p>\n
The day after we talk, he\u2019s heading to a plot of land in the hills near Waih\u012b that he\u2019s looking at buying to set up his own distillery, and speaking to local heirloom corn growers in Ruatoria who have been cultivating the old corn varieties that came over in the 1770s.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of why I went away is that I wanted to bring whisky-making back home,\u201d Ravenhall says. \u201cI want to look at how we can make something that uses Te Ao M\u0101ori and Te Ao Pakeha to make something that embraces all elements of our culture and expresses who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
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