SIA: A Surprisingly Contemporary Scotch

“What you do when you find something you love, like I found with Scotch, is you try to introduce all your friends to it,” says Carin Luna-Ostaseski, the mastermind behind SIA, a blended Scotch whisky brand that she founded in 2013. “And my friends were like, ‘hard pass.’” They expressed typical objections among non Scotch drinkers: it burns your nostrils, it tastes like gasoline, it’s too expensive.

A Different Kind of Scotch

Luna-Ostaseski set out to respond to her friend’s objections by creating a “not your grandfather’s Scotch” kind of Scotch that could have broader appeal for the uninitiated or “Scotch curious,” and focusing on flavor and accessibility. “With SIA I wanted to make sure it was easy-drinking, versatile, and wasn’t super expensive so people wouldn’t feel like they couldn’t make a cocktail with it,” she says. Through her experience of leading Scotch tastings for hundreds of people before starting SIA, she surmised that the nose was the most important factor in establishing approachability. “If you sense too much smoke or peat on the nose, you brace for impact and you think you’re not going to like it before you even try it. So it was really important to me to create a whisky that had primarily vanilla and caramel notes on the nose, a little citrus and honey in the midpalate, and gentle hints of smoke on the finish.”

But SIA isn’t your grandfather’s Scotch for more than just its nose and palate. It is perhaps the most contemporary Scotch story ever told, with a refreshingly relevant approach to what for many can be a confounding spirit. Every element of the brand, from its founder and her backstory to its recipe development, to its design, to its mission, has a modern, convention-changing attitude.

A Contemporary Back Story

As a professional Cuban-American woman with over a decade of experience in design as a Creative Director, Luna-Ostaseski isn’t exactly a prototypical candidate for starting a Scotch brand. In fact, she is the first Hispanic person to do so.

Her own love of Scotch came about in the same way she hoped to be able to offer to her friends. When a coworker invited her out for a glass of Scotch in her 20s, she admitted that she wasn’t much into it. “It sounds like you just haven’t found your brand yet,” the friend told her, introducing the very idea that not all Scotches are made alike, and preconceived notions should be put aside. After tasting 4 different selections that night with a knowledgeable bartender who understood the stories, processes and nuances behind the brands, something finally clicked. “Scotch also has a super romantic, legacy idea;” says Luna-Ostaseski, “that whisky makers were putting product into barrels to age for future generations.”

It was a taste of Oban 14 that finally opened the peated floodgates: “That changed the game for me,” she says, “it was so approachable, smooth, and easy drinking,” but even then she understood this wasn’t the type of thing one should make a cocktail with, which became one of her goals for SIA.

A Contemporary Development Process

After years spent tasting others on various Scotch brands, Luna-Ostaseski knew that the legacy she wasn’t to create for herself was in developing her own, which she was ultimately able to do following a successful crowdfunding campaign, another Scotch first.

She had a sense of what she wanted in the flavor profile—aromatic, balanced, and approachable—and the development process for her blended Scotch began, not in a distillery or lab, but in her kitchen. “Basically I was taking a mixing glass and trying different recipes and ratios by blending from the numerous bottles of Scotch I had acquired over a breakup.”

When the time came to actually find blenders in Scotland who could help her realize her brand, her process as an industry outsider was a simple cold-calling one. “I was a graphic designer for 17 years,” she says. “I didn’t know people in the whisky world, so I started knocking on doors.” After 80 emails sent to no avail, on the 81st a set of sisters who were taking over their dad’s Scotch importing business loved the idea, and offered to introduce her to producers.

She ended up with, in her words, a “blending dream team”: Emma Walker, who was responsible for Jane Walker, Jim Beveridge from Johnnie Walker, and Craig Wallace from Diageo.

To achieve the distinct flavor profile she sought, SIA’s blend includes whiskies from a variety of regions: “The blend itself is a mix of Speyside, Highland, Lowlands, with not too much Islay,” she explains. “It’s a high malt to grain ratio—40% malt with 60% grain. Having a little bit more malt makes it easier-drinking. For me it was more about flavor consistency than it was about regions or percentages, and the blend may change from year to year to reflect that.”

In its young life, SIA has been extremely successful in the award circuit. Besides a Double Gold from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2014, and a 90-point rating from Whiskey Advocate in 2015, in 2016 the Ultimate Spirits Challenge awarded the brand 96 points: “ It actually beat out Johnnie Walker Blue,” says Luna-Ostaseski. “Not bad for $39.99.”

A Contemporary Design

Every aspect of the brand development—from its name, to the label, to the bottle design came with conscientious choices that were strongly rooted in accessibility, and influenced by her design background.

“I think I can objectively say that a lot of Scotch brands are difficult to pronounce,” says Luna-Ostaseski, and SIA was chosen as a name, not only because it is easy to say among a sea of glens and laddichs, because it means the number 6 in Scottish Gaelic—a significant number to her personally, and also because it was the sixth name idea that she’d come up with, and reflected the 6 different whiskies that were included in the original blend. “It was a friend who pointed out to me later that it can also stand for Scotch is Awesome,” she says, an auspicious coincidence given her on-going mission for broad Scotch conversion.

Before she even started the process for the developing the actual liquid, she was talking to bartenders, bar managers, and store owners about considerations for the actual packaging, resulting in a bold label with an easy-to-see name, and a long-necked and thin bottle that made for easy pouring and speed rack utility, one that didn’t have a big footprint for retail shelves, and was neither too masculine nor feminine. “It’s an equal opportunity whisky,” she says.

Contemporary Approaches to Tasting

Along with continuing to lead whisky tastings and introduce more and younger people to the category, Luna-Ostaseski has also focused some energy on offering pairing ideas between SIA and food categories that don’t necessarily get a lot of Scotch attention: namely chocolate, and cheese.

She partnered with California chocolatier Recchuiti, selecting chocolates within their product line that echo the primary notes of SIA: Burnt Caramel, Force Noir (dark chocolate with vanilla,) Semi-sweet Lemon Verbena, and Milk Chocolate Honeycomb. For cheese she identified legendary California cheesemaker Cowgirl Creamery as an ideal pairing partner, suggesting several cheeses that aren’t so pungent as to overpower the Scotch, but have complimentary tasting notes and textures such as Mt. Tam, Pierce Point, and Wagon Wheel.

A Mission for the Future

As a business woman of Hispanic heritage, she also knew she wanted to pay forward any success the brand brought her, and so after several years of donating as much money as she could manage to minority entrepreneur causes, in 2021 she was finally able to found The Entrepreneurial Spirit Fund by SIA Scotch, which offered 25 grants of $10,000 to minority business people from any industry, and came with a mentorship opportunity from Luna-Ostaseski herself. This year she hopes to narrow the focus to those in the food, beverage, and hospitality sector.

For Luna-Ostaseski, this piece of the business is as important as the Scotch itself: “We exist to challenge conventions, and to inspire people to do the unexpected.”