Kingsbarns Lowland Distillery

Kingsbarns Distillery

The selected location for the Kingsbarns Distillery is 9 miles southeast of the world famous home of golf, St Andrews, and Three miles North West of the beautiful harbour of Crail, in an area known as East Neuk and its picturesque fishing villages.

On the south side of the village of the same name, being the location of the barns used to store grain before being transported to the Palace at Falkirk.
The Kingsbarns Distillery will be tastefully converted from the charming and architecturally important East Newhall Farm. The ancient barns, doocot, mill and stables provide the perfect location to take whisky making back to its artisanal, craft origins, a time when farmers themselves would distil their surplus barley.

To set up an original style “farm Distillery” the company has recruited, the “grandfather” of Australian whisky, Bill Lark who has successfully introduced “craft distilling into Australia. Bill is bringing his pioneering whisky making model to Scotland. These techniques will allow the distillery produce the lightly peated, deep whisky with a big finish that they are striving for.

If they can achieve this they will be breaking free from the typical traditional light and floral lowland style in order to offer something truly unique and outstanding to whisky lovers.

The flexibility of Bill’s micro-distilling model will also enable the distillery to produce a range of non matured spirits such as gin, schnapps and liqueurs.

Geography and Tourism.

Situated in the ancient Kingdom of Fife the distillery is surrounded by some of the richest agricultural land in Scotland, much of it barley, and overlooks the world famous Kingsbarns Golf Links itself dates back to 1793.

The course attracts around 25,000 golfers a year and is established as one of Scotland’s finest links courses. It hosts the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October every year, one of the biggest events on the European Tour, and this year for the first time is a final qualifying course for the British Open at St Andrews.

In whisky geography terms the Kingsbarns Distillery is located in the Lowlands. Some people consider this region as something of a ‘poor relation’ to the higher profile and more glamorous Highlands and Islands. However there was a time when the Lowlands were the powerhouse of Scotch whisky production, and way back in 1797 there were 31 Lowland distilleries in operation.

This dominance slowly changed and the Lowland region became best known for the large-Full industrial distillation of lighter grain spirit for blending purposes and up to the start of the millennium only two working malt whisky distilleries remained, Auchentoshan (Glasgow) and Glenkinchie, (Edinburgh).

The situation improved with the re-commissioning of Bladnoch, (Wigtown) in 2000, followed by the opening of Fife’s private farm-based Daftmill distillery in 2005. A further lowland distillery is in advanced planning stages at Annandale (Southwest Lowlands close to Bladnoch)

With all the Lowland regions’ whisky distilleries with visitor centers at quite some distance, Daftmill does not at present offer a visitor experience, the nearest competitors for the Tourist Traffic are all outside the Kingdom of Fife and over an hours drive away from St Andrews these include Tullibardine, Glenturret, Glenkinchie, Edradour and Aberfeldy.

This will put the distillery in a strong position to offer the “ Farm Distilling Whisky Experience” to those drawn to the major golf attractions on the distilleries door step.

As well as the Distillery facilities future visitors will be able to walk directly from the Distillery through the magical Cambo Woods, over the Burn to the Gardens, Cambo Mansion House and on to the magnificent Golf Links, Beach and popular Fife Coastal Path.

Golf and whisky heaven.