Kingsbarns Distillery
The ancestors of the Wemyss family were once named earls and owned a large area of land in Fife, Lowland, Scotland, and even had an ancient castle named Wemyss Castle.
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The Wemyss family originally opened the Wemyss Malts brand to operate Independent Bottle (IB) in 2005. The barley grown on the estate under the Wemyss family's name has also been used in whiskey distilleries.
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But the Wemyss family was not satisfied with this and had always wanted to own their own distillery. Unable to find a suitable acquisition target for many years, the Wemyss family simply returned to their roots in Fife to build a factory, and the Kingsbarns Distillery was successfully completed at the end of 2014.
Raw materials:
Unlike other distilleries that draw water from streams or lakes, Kingsbarns drills wells about 100 meters deep to explore for mineral-rich groundwater for distillation.
The barley is made from the Laureate variety grown locally in Fife, and no peat is used for curing after germination.
Fermentation:
After many experiments, it was decided to use Anchor and SafWhiskyM1 yeasts for fermentation in order to bring out sufficient fruit flavor while maintaining the efficiency of alcohol production.
Fermentation time ranges from 72 to 120 hours, with the final alcohol content of 'Wash' being around 8%.
Distillation:
The distillery has only one set of stills, all pear-shaped:
Wash Still：7500L
Spirit Still：4500L
The distillery uses a slow distillation method to allow the steam to have a "copper dialogue" in the still for a longer period of time to eliminate the heavier sulfur compounds and other impurity smells in the steam.
The winery only captures the most essential "heart" of the wine and discards a large amount of the "wine tail" in order to avoid collecting any heavier impurity smell and retain the lightest and most delicate floral and fruity flavor as much as possible.
As a result, Kingsbarns' "New Make" has an alcohol content as high as 73%, which can be said to be quite astonishing. This is higher than the approximately 70% of Macallan, which has "Classic Cut" as one of its pillars.
Of course, these New Makes still need to be diluted to 63.5% before being put into barrels.
There is a review of Kingsbarns New Make in WF. Comments on its taste include "really very fruity!". Its fruity taste is mainly composed of a large amount of green pear, pear, grass, lemon, etc., and its texture is relatively light.
He also mentioned that such new wine probably doesn’t have too many foreign flavors that need to be metabolized by wooden barrels, and it can probably mature faster.
ripe:
Mainly matured in bourbon barrels, these barrels are mainly shipped directly from Heaven Hill to Kingsbarns.
We also use STR Portuguese red wine barrels, sherry barrels, and a small number of other barrel types.
Because the winery is so small, most of these filled barrels are not stored in the winery. However, officials announced in November 2022 that a warehouse and bottling plant will be added, which shows that the future of the winery is very bright.
Wine type:
We won’t talk about these regular models today, and we’ll talk about the reasons later when we have a chance.
By the way, I really want to drink the bottle of New Make above.
Finally, the editor would like to recommend the official website of Kingsbarns to everyone:
The text introduction to the production process and even various data are very clear. Friends who like to watch short videos can also check out its YouTube. It is rich in information and is a good opportunity to learn whiskey knowledge.
See you next time.