Kingsbarns New Make Spirit

One of the highlights of our recent golf trip to Scotland was visiting the St Andrews area and playing several of the courses making up St. Andrews Links. We also played the highly-rated and spectacular links course of Kingsbarns, situated along the coast nearby. The course itself is relatively new at 20 years old and one of its caddies, Douglas Clement, helped found Kingsbarns distillery only a mile away. Clement invested 65k pounds of his own savings coupled with a grant of 650k pounds from the Scottish government to seed the operation. Also investing in the project was the entrepreneurial Wemyss family, prominent in Fife for over 6 centuries with a similarly aged castle to prove it. Prior to this, the family created the independent bottling company, Wemyss Vintage Malts, around 2005. Several of their offerings were on display and for sale in Kingsbarns’ visitor center and distillery building. The structure is a stone-by-stone restoration of a freestanding building on the farm purchased for this purpose. It was tastefully fashioned and appearing like a fortified fortress. Distillery operations began in 2015 and its first bottling is expected shortly with aging requirements of 3 years and a day. We took the tour which culminated in a sample of their new make spirit and also a taste of the soft water used in its process. The water is drawn from layers of sandstone formed 100 million years ago and 100 meters below the farm. Rainwater takes a decade or more to penetrate this deeply being filtered along the way and removing any minerals. It tasted like distilled water having a slippery feel of alkalinity and ideal for whisky making. At 63.5 ABV, the new make was incredibly smooth and having an effervescence reminiscent of high quality vodka. Jim Murray graded the new make at 95/100. 85% of their whisky is being aged in first-fill bourbon barrels sourced from Heaven Hill of Kentucky with the remaining 15% being aged in ex-port and ex-sherry casks. Long-necked stills will aid in the removal of volatiles helping to create what the company hopes to be a dry, light and fruity style of whisky in the lowland tradition. A class act, I would expect this whisky to be of a very high quality.

I'm on a mission to try all of Scotland's distilleries. Mostly active but I've knocked off a few inactive along the way. It starts getting a bit harder for those opened in the last few years so I'm cheating and trying new make and progress statements. Alephi's 2 year progess statement I had Wed night was beautiful. Anyway to the drop at hand. Interesting back story this one for those who are avid golfers. A decade ago a golf caddie had an idea that he wanted to open a distillery. Ambitious on his salary you may think. What he had was a lot of rich contacts however i.e. those he had caddied for) and so after a lot of ringing round he had £100k of seed funding, bludged off the govt grants system a bit and the Wemyss family of Wemyss malts fame sorted the rest. Some time this year we should see whisky hopefully. Anyhow the new make. Its a bit like Sake or Soju. Sweet Umami, malt, fermented cabbage. I like it. Hard to rate really given its whisky that isn't quite yet i.e. half finished. So I won't.

Strong. Too strong