Kingsbarns New Make Spirit

A standout moment from our recent golf trip to Scotland was exploring the St Andrews region and playing several of the courses at St. Andrews Links. We also experienced the highly acclaimed and stunning coastal links course at Kingsbarns, located nearby. This course is relatively new, only 20 years old, and one of its caddies, Douglas Clement, co-founded the Kingsbarns distillery just a mile away. Clement contributed 65,000 pounds of his personal savings, supplemented by a 650,000-pound grant from the Scottish government, to initiate the venture. The entrepreneurial Wemyss family, influential in Fife for over six centuries with a castle of similar age to prove it, also invested in the project. Previously, the family established the independent bottling company, Wemyss Vintage Malts, around 2005. Numerous of their offerings were showcased and available for purchase in the Kingsbarns visitor center and distillery building. The structure is a meticulous restoration of a standalone building on the farm acquired for this purpose, presented in a refined, fortress-like appearance. Distillery operations commenced in 2015, with its inaugural bottling anticipated soon, adhering to aging requirements of three years and one day. Our tour concluded with a sample of their new make spirit and a taste of the pure water used in its production. This water is sourced from sandstone layers 100 meters beneath the farm, formed 100 million years ago. Rainwater takes over a decade to filter through this depth, losing any minerals along the way. It tasted like purified water, possessing an alkaline, slick quality ideal for whisky creation. At 63.5% ABV, the new make was exceptionally smooth, exhibiting an effervescence akin to high-quality vodka. Jim Murray rated the new make at 95 out of 100. Eighty-five percent of their whisky is maturing in first-fill bourbon casks obtained from Heaven Hill in Kentucky, with the remaining fifteen percent aging in ex-port and ex-sherry casks. Tall stills are intended to reduce volatile compounds, contributing to the company's goal of producing a dry, light, and fruity whisky in the lowland style. A distinguished effort, I anticipate this whisky will be of a very high caliber.

I'm on a mission to try all of Scotland's distilleries. Mostly active but I've checked off a few inactive ones along the way. It's starting to get a bit harder for those opened in the last few years so I'm bending the rules and trying new make spirit and progress statements. A progress statement I tried a few nights ago was beautiful. Anyway, on to the spirit at hand. An interesting backstory 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 might think. What he had was a lot of wealthy connections, however, the people he had caddied for. And so after a lot of calls, he secured £100k of seed funding, got a bit from government grants, and the Wemyss family, famous for Wemyss malts, sorted the rest. Sometime this year, we should see whisky hopefully. Anyway, the new make spirit. It's a bit like Sake or Soju. Sweet Umami, malt, fermented cabbage. I like it. Hard to rate, really, given it's whisky that isn't quite yet, meaning half finished. So I won't.

Potent. Overly so.