Claire and Martin Murray are a married couple, and their professional backgrounds were almost comically mismatched for the project they took on. Martin had spent his career in oil and gas, working for TotalEnergies and then BP. Claire came from hospitality. Clearing work on the Dunnet site began in 2012, and the still - their first - was commissioned to exacting specifications from John Dore & Co., the venerable English coppersmiths. They named it Margret, after Martin's mother. The first spirit run came in August 2014. A second still followed later that year. They called her Elizabeth, in honour of the late Queen Mother whose own Caithness home was just down the road - a quiet local tribute from one north-coast business to the memory of another.

The flagship gin was released in 2015 and named for Rhodiola rosea, a botanical that grows wild along the Caithness clifftops and is called "rock rose" locally. Several of its botanicals are still hand-foraged from the area around the distillery, a labor-intensive choice that ties the product directly to its place. The company has not been precious about its identity, though - in 2018 it released a limited edition called Broach Rose to support the Caithness Broach Project, an archaeological charity, using botanicals inspired by plant remains found in a Bronze Age cist grave at Achavanich. In 2019 came Cold Water, a Thurso surf-themed bottling that raised funds for the Rotary Club of Thurso, with spearmint and caraway in the mix. The range has since grown to include Holy Grass Vodka and Mapmaker's Rum, but Rock Rose remains the calling card.

The accolades arrived quickly. In 2019, Dunnet Bay was named Scottish Distillery of the Year at the Scottish Gin Awards. The Murrays appointed an environmental manager in 2021, and in 2022 the Federation of Small Businesses gave them Environmental/Sustainability Business of the Year. That same year they secured planning permission to convert their second site - the B-listed Castletown Mill, a 19th-century grain mill they had acquired in 2021 - into a single malt whisky distillery, expanding the operation into spirits that take a decade to mature. The conversion began in 2023. If it succeeds, the Murrays will join a small handful of producers making both gin and whisky on the same northern coast, the gin paying the bills while the whisky sleeps in barrels under the salt air.