In person: Dougal Sharp, brewer

"I'm convinced I could convert you," says the 38-year-old brewing big-wig. "If you like wine, Innis & Gunn is oak aged, so there's a lot of nice, delicate flavours. It's light, it's deep, it's not a particularly bitter beer. If you look at all the great wine and spirit companies, what they strive for, of course, is depth of flavour and complexity, but above all else it's balance, and that's what we do in spades."

If I needed more convincing, he adds: "Ml per ml, beer contains less calories than semi-skimmed milk. It's about 94 per cent water. If you compare it to wine, it's significantly less calorific."

Innis & Gunn is a true Scottish success story. Launched in 2003, by 2009 its turnover had reached 4.39 million. Which is no small beer. It is the biggest selling British bottled beer in Canada and number two import ale in Sweden, while it has just launched in the US to great acclaim. So popular is it beyond these shores, in fact, that it has also just won a Queen's Award for Enterprise in International Trade.

"It's a huge achievement," says Sharp (the full nomenclature is Dougal Gunn Sharp, his brother Neil Innis Sharp, hence the company name). "The importance of having a Queen's Award cannot be overstated. It underlines credibility."

Travelling widely as part of the job - Canada and New York last week, Sweden and Denmark next - means he has not been able to spend as much time as he'd like with his young family: 14-week-old Ruby, two-year-old Harry, wife Maggie and border collie Barley. But whenever they get a chance, they head to their bolthole in Glenshee. "It's a beautiful old manse that was built in the 1850s. It's just classic Highland Scotland: it has the view, it has the river at the bottom of the garden, there are great walks all around. We just love going up there."

Still, visiting customers overseas gives him the opportunity to witness drinking tastes around the world. And what he's discovered is that they take their beer pretty seriously in the States. "The level of awareness and connoisseurship around craft beer there is incredible. We were sitting in a bar in downtown New York, and the table next to us were all drinking Innis & Gunn. When we spoke to them, the guy had a fair bit of knowledge about craft beer, but the girls were talking about different breweries, different beer styles, they were really getting it. For us that was such an eye-opener. We are beginning to see a change in the UK market towards that. Beer is becoming cool."

It also helps Innis & Gunn's case, of course, that it is a uniquely Scottish product."Let's not beat about the bush, everyone I've ever met in North America and Canada, with the exception of somebody with an Italian surname, has Scottish roots somewhere. So it's a real positive for our brand that, not only are we a Scottish company, based in Scotland, but that we're using techniques to make our beer that Scotland is renowned for the world over. Our production process is unique in that sense.

"We use a master brewer but we're also using barrel coopers and master blenders which is more from the Scotch whisky territory. And the fact we're combining some of the very best things about Scotland in a very Scottish product, it has struck a chord."

You could say brewing is in his blood. Sharp's father led the management buyout of Edinburgh's Caledonian Brewery in 1987 and Sharp worked there in his school holidays rolling barrels, sweeping floors, filling barrels ... "all that stuff. I worked my way up to painting walls, then I got to go out in the lorries. I paid my way through university by working in the brewery so by the time I graduated I'd learned the brewing process from the ground up.

"I love cooking," he adds, "so I like to think I have a basic understanding of flavour, which helps. I began to experiment and try things and it got into my blood. It's a creative process. It's relaxing, it's inspiring."

And while we're on the subject of cooking, what would he pair a bottle of Innis & Gunn oak-aged beer with? "My own personal favourite would be something like a seared scallop with some crispy pancetta and rocket and a little balsamic dressing." Sounds good to me - I'm off to crack open a bottle. n