Annandale

According to the company, George Donald built the distillery between 1830 and 1836 and founded it in 1836. After his death in 1883 it passed to John Sykes Gardner, and in 1893 Johnnie Walker and Sons bought it to supply peated malt for their blends. They added the pagoda-roofed kiln designed by Charles Doig, the tall brick chimney and a larger warehouse. Production stopped in 1918, and the site later served for porridge production and as part of a farm.

Professor David Thomson and Teresa Church bought the site in 2007; Companies House shows the operating company incorporated that February. Restoration began in 2009, with archaeologists from Glasgow University (GUARD) excavating in 2009-10. The first new spirit ran on 9 November 2014, the Princess Royal reopened the distillery on 10 September 2015 after a £10.5 million restoration, and the first bottling followed in 2018.

The distillery stands at Northfield, just north of Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, in the Lowland region. The company says the site was chosen for its water, local peat and good conditions for maturing whisky. Historic Environment Scotland lists the Z-plan former distillery range, built against a slope in whitewashed rubble with a kiln pagoda added in the late nineteenth century, and the tall yellow-brick chimney; it notes that distilleries attached to farms are unusual. The company says the pagoda roof is one of only five original Doig pagoda roofs left.

The production plant was designed by the late Dr Jim Swan. The company says it is the first of its kind: it uses twin copper spirit stills, which it credits with removing most of the unwanted sulphur compounds during distillation. Both an unpeated spirit, Man O' Words, and a peated spirit, Man O' Sword, are made and matured in a range of cask types chosen one by one, in the historic bonded warehouse on site. The company also sells casks to private buyers, which mature at the distillery. The capacity of the stills is not given in the sources opened.

The company presents two house styles from one plant: unpeated and peated, each in several cask types. It claims that the twin spirit stills give a spirit which reaches "exceptional sensory maturity" in just three years, and quotes Jim Swan as calling the conditions in its bonded warehouse ideal. No tasting description for the core whiskies was found in the sources opened.