Zoey Darnbrough Didn't Know Her Hometown Had a Distillery. Now She Co-ordinates Its Tourism
A few years ago, Zoey Darnbrough did not know there was a whisky distillery near her hometown in southern Scotland. Her first thought when a job came up there was: there's a distillery in Annan? Her second was: whisky? She took it anyway, and has since risen from tour guide to group tourism and events co-ordinator at the site near Annan. She was recently nominated for rising star recognition at the South of Scotland Thistle Awards, and says she hopes to play her part in changing people's opinions of the world of whisky one woman at a time.
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The slogan is doing more work than it looks. She describes people assuming she might lack the knowledge of older counterparts, and calls the experience tricky. Then she immediately adds that her own experiences have been mostly pleasant, that she has not really felt it, but that she understands the struggles other people face. She is holding two things at once, and honestly.
Holding both is fine, but the useful part is the one she says about other people rather than herself. The candid version of her story is a retention problem: she left to study heritage and tourism in Stirling and, unlike many of her peers, came back to Dumfries and Galloway for work, and she thinks a lot more could be done to stop young people from leaving.