Port of Leith

Ian Stirling and Paddy Fletcher grew up in Edinburgh and, by their own account, began experimenting with whisky making in a back garden. In 2014 they founded Muckle Brig as parent of the distillery project, a wine importing business and later the Lind & Lime gin distillery. Whisky Magazine reports a false start in 2015, when their main investor withdrew and they lost their first site; the final site took two more years to secure, and the pandemic delayed building.

From 2016 the founders ran a research programme with the International Centre for Brewing & Distilling at Heriot-Watt University, funded through an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership. A researcher made scores of test spirits on a 5-litre still, and in June 2021 two yeasts were trialled at commercial scale at The Glasgow Distillery. The stills were installed in March 2023, and the distillery opened later that year.

The distillery stands at Whisky Quay on the waterfront behind Ocean Terminal in Leith, Edinburgh's port, in the Lowland region, on the site of an old biscuit factory. The Edinburgh Evening News reported a GBP 12 million building of nine storeys; Whisky Magazine describes eight and a half, with production on the lower four floors and a bar, tasting rooms and shop above. Ian Stirling has called Leith the unofficial capital of Scotch whisky in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when it was a centre of the wine and whisky trade.

Barley comes from a single farm near Edinburgh, Upper Bolton, and is malted by Crisp at Alloa; distillation began with the variety Laureate. Malt arrives on the fourth floor, is milled on site and goes to a 1.5-tonne semi-lauter mash tun. The wort runs down to seven stainless steel fermenters of 7,500 litres, hung from the steel frame between the second and third floors, of which six were in regular use. Two copper stills from The Speyside Copper Works in Elgin, a 7,000-litre wash still and a 5,000-litre spirit still, stand on the first floor. The owners give a capacity of one million bottles a year.

The founders say they aim for a complex, fruity spirit, with fruit coming from yeast and fermentation, and that it will not stay the same: each year's production is meant to be released as a vintage that reflects its barley, yeast and casks. They have ruled out peated whisky. Maturation is to use second- and third-fill bourbon casks and many wine casks, including casks from the sherry producer Bodegas Baron and the port producer Martha's Estate, a reference to Leith's past as a wine port.