Lochlea was a cattle farm when it was originally acquired it in 2006. Extending some 222 acres, we realised that for a farm of that size to be viable we needed to do something very different.

Barley had historically been grown on the farm land, largely as livestock feed, so in 2015 we embarked on an experiment, growing 50 acres of malting barley.

Working away quietly, learning from our (not too frequent) mistakes, exploring the possibilities and making contacts in the malting industry gave us the confidence to make a big decision: we’d develop and operate a single malt distillery here at Lochlea.

Construction got underway in 2017, converting the former piggery, byre and midden in the heart of the farm steading into the distillery, and repurposing the cattle sheds into bonded warehouses. We secured all our licences in 2018, and the distillery was commissioned in August 2018.

Since then, we have been growing our barley, and the distillery team have been skillfully and patiently making spirit.

The land at Lochlea is important, and not just to the distinctive taste of our whisky. This was the land that Robert Burns tended when he lived at Lochlea Farm, inspiring his thinking and development as a poet. Burns toiled the same soil that we are privileged to grow our malting barley in today.

We like to think he’d approve.