Scapa Distillery was founded in 1885 by Macfarlane and Townsend, a Glasgow blending firm that wanted a northern source of single malt to add complexity to its blends. The location they chose was a stretch of shoreline on the southern coast of Orkney's Mainland, two miles south of Kirkwall and directly opposite the islands that would eventually be linked by the Churchill Barriers. The site had water (the Lingro Burn), shipping access (the shore of Scapa Flow), and proximity to Highland Park's existing operation, which gave Scapa a ready labour pool of trained distillery workers. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Scapa worked quietly as a producer for blenders, its name barely known outside the trade. Single malt as a category did not yet exist as today's marketers understand it. Scapa was an ingredient, not a brand.

Scapa is unusual among Scottish distilleries in having only two stills, one wash and one spirit, where most operations run four or six. It is even more unusual in that the wash still was originally a Lomond still, an experimental design developed in the 1950s by Hiram Walker to give blenders more flexibility in flavour profile. The defining feature of a Lomond still is a set of horizontal condensation plates inside its neck that can be adjusted to vary how much reflux the spirit gets. Most Lomond stills have been scrapped. Scapa kept its wash still but removed the plates, so it now functions as a conventional pot still with the distinctively squat profile of its Lomond origins. The result is a heavier, oilier new-make spirit that contributes to Scapa's characteristic mouthfeel.

What makes Scapa distinct is the decision to suppress peat. Orkney's peat is heather-rich and produces the sweet floral smoke that defines Highland Park, but Scapa's owners chose a different path. The water is piped from the Lingro Burn rather than allowed to sit in peat-cuts, and the malt is dried over clean hot air rather than peat smoke. The result is a single malt that tastes lightly nutty, honey-sweet, with a faint salinity from the coastal location and almost no phenol. It is the most accessible Islands whisky for drinkers who find Islay too aggressive. The 14-year-old expression that ran for most of the 2000s won gold and double gold medals at the 2005 and 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competitions. The Beverage Testing Institute gave the same whisky a more modest 85 out of 100 in 2005. Reviews varied. The whisky did not.

Pernod Ricard, through its Chivas Brothers subsidiary, owns Scapa today, having acquired the distillery in 2005. The core range is now Scapa Skiren, a no-age-statement single malt matured entirely in first-fill American oak ex-bourbon casks, and Scapa Glansa, launched in 2016, which adds a lightly peated finish in casks that previously held heavily smoked whisky. Both names are Old Norse, referencing Orkney's Viking heritage; Skiren means glittering bright sky, Glansa means stormy sky. The classic 14-year-old and the briefly available 16-year-old released in 2009 have both been discontinued and now command collector prices on the secondary market. For most of the twenty-first century Scapa has been the quieter sibling in the Orkney whisky family, the one that does not advertise.

The distillery sits on a low headland above the sea, with the pagoda-roofed kiln of the original maltings still standing although malting has long since moved off-site. Look across Scapa Flow from the distillery and you see the islands that the Royal Navy spent two world wars trying to defend and the Italian prisoners spent four years sealing off. The destroyer wrecks of the scuttled German fleet of 1919 lie on the seabed not far offshore. So does HMS Royal Oak, sunk in 1939 with 833 of her crew. Scapa Distillery is open for tours but the operation is small and not heavily promoted; book ahead. The whisky tastes of honey and oak and a faint trace of the salt wind that comes in off the most famous anchorage in British naval history.