WHISKY
To Kingdom come
At one time the Kingdom of Fife was a hotbed of whisky distilleries. Today numbers are back on the rise and the water of life seems to be making a return to its roots
Lindores Abbey, near Newburgh. In the Excheq- uer Rolls of Scotland from 1494 it reads ‘…eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae’. Eight bolls are equivalent to about 50 kilograms today, suggesting that the use of malted barley for making whisky was pretty well estab- lished by this point. ‘Aqua vitae’ is Latin for ‘water of life’, which is ‘uisge beatha’ in Gaelic, the origin of the modern word ‘whisky’. There is a perception that Speyside and Islay
T
are the heart of whisky making but in the Eight- eenth and Nineteenth centuries, Fife’s abundant grain and proximity to Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth made it the centre of the nation’s whisky production. During this period there were around 20 distilleries in Fife – including the forgotten distillery of Tulliallan, near Kincardine Bridge, which operated from 1795-1825 on the site of what is now the Scottish Police College. Most Fife distilleries were small rural opera-
tions, as is one of the two remaining distilleries in the Kingdom, the family-run Daftmill. A little over a decade ago two farming brothers, Ian and Francis Cuthbert, decided to turn an unused mill and farm buildings into a micro-distillery with the help of Ian’s son, John. The ‘Daft’ part of the name comes from the stream beside the distillery as the local topography means the stream that ran the mill appears to run uphill. This micro-distillery only started distilling in
2005, which means their maturing stock is now eight years old. Although it could legally be bottled for sale, rumours suggest that they may wait until it is 10 years old before they sell the fi rst bottle. Plans are also in place for a more large-scale
family-run addition to Fife’s whisky landscape after Wemyss Malts recently agreed to help whis- ky’s most dogged entrepreneur, Doug Clement, fi nally realise his dream. The Wemyss family have just acquired the Kingsbarns project that Clement has run on the Cambo Estate since 2009. Clement was a whisky-loving caddy who gave
up his job at the Old Course when he spotted a niche in the market after the thousandth Ameri-
WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 123
he Kingdom of Fife has a rich history of distilling whisky. The very fi rst written reference to whisky has its origins in Fife at
can golfer of the year asked him for a distillery to visit nearby. As the nearest is Tullibardine, which is over an hour from St Andrews, he worked on the ‘if you build it they will come’ premise. Determined to build his distillery, he managed to fi nd the fi rst £100,000 from his fellow caddies. However, the project stalled until the Wemyss family – who have historic links to Wemyss castle and who have been bottling their own whisky since 2005 - acquired the project and agreed to fund the £3 million needed to ensure production at the site. The Kingsbarns operation will be nowhere
near the biggest in Fife, however. One of the largest distilleries in Fife during 18th and 19th century was Cameronbridge Distillery and it is the only surviving distillery from that time that is still in operation today. John Haig, of the Haig distilling dynasty, is said to have leased the land for the distillery from Captain Wemyss, the Laird of Wemyss Castle. Haig fi rst opened Cameronbridge Distillery in
1824 but Diageo now owns the site. It is thought to have been one of the fi rst to produce grain whisky and now has a capacity of 105 million litres per annum. The reason they produce so much is that Cameronbridge also turns out Smirnoff vodka, Pimm’s, Tanqueray and Gordon’s gin. There are also plans for a new distillery in Glen-
rothes. Little is known about the project at this stage, but it won’t be called Glenrothes Distillery as The Glenrothes Distillery by the burn of Rothes in Speyside has been distilling since 1879.
WORDS BLAIR BOWMAN
‘Fife’s abundant grain made it the centre of the nation’s whisky production’
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