Lochlea

The company says Robert Burns lived and worked at Lochlea from 1777 to 1784, debating at the Bachelors' Club in nearby Tarbolton in the evenings. Neil and Jen McGeoch came to the farm in 2006 and ran a pedigree beef suckler herd. By 2014, by their account, beef alone would not secure the farm. In 2015 they sowed 20 acres (about 8 ha) of spring barley to see whether they could harvest 50 tons of malting barley, and the trial worked.

Building began in 2017 inside the existing farm buildings. The stills were commissioned in August 2018, and on 29 August 2018 the first 29 casks were filled. Companies House shows Lochlea Distilling Company Limited incorporated on 27 April 2016 and controlled by the McGeoch family, directly and through Burglas Limited.

Lochlea lies near Craigie and Tarbolton in South Ayrshire, in the Lowland region. It was a family-run dairy farm before the McGeochs' beef herd, and barley was long grown there as feed. The distillery sits within the eighteenth-century farm steading: the former piggery, byre and midden house mashing, fermentation and distillation, and the old cattle sheds have become bonded warehouses. The company says all the barley for Lochlea single malt is grown on its own land, and that it farms with cover crops and farmyard manure to keep the soil healthy.

According to the company, about 600 tons of spring barley are harvested each year and malted for the distillery. Each day 2 tons of malt are milled and mashed with three separate waters, aiming for clear worts that keep a cereal note. Distillation is in two copper pot stills shaped for a light, fruit-forward spirit; the stillman alone controls the steam, and the spirit runs over a shallow lyne arm into condensers. New make is filled into casks that the company buys directly and matures in the converted cattle sheds on the farm. The opened sources do not give still sizes, fermentation times or capacity.

The company describes its spirit as light and fruit-forward with a signature cereal note, and calls its whisky a single estate Lowland single malt. Because all the barley comes from the farm, it says each year's crop, set by acreage and weather, limits and shapes what it can make. Releases include small batches and single casks, such as a single fresh bourbon cask of 250 bottles for the first East Ayrshire Whisky Festival.