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Kingsbarns distillery

Perhaps the least likely distillery to exist Kingsbarns was the brain child of Douglas Clement, a former pro golf caddy with no background in the industry. Happily he had sufficient connection to wealthy investors and a little luck. Clement notes that he was "fed up sending my golfing clients out of Fife to visit a distillery and I thought, surely there’s an opportunity to create a distillery close to the golf courses?”/q>. With a £1.6 million target, despite securing £100,000 funding and a government grant of £670,000 it looked unlikely that Clement’s dream of a Kingsbarns distillery would go ahead.

Happily the attempt attracted the attention of the Wemyss family (owners of Wemyss Malts) who co-incidentally had owned part of the Cambo Estate between 1759 and 1783. In January 2013, in a buyout that saw Clement remaining as a director the the business was sold to the Wemyss family. Work began on Kingsbarns distillery within six months and the distillery was up and running within 18 months.

Kingsbarns factsheet

Name Pronounced AKA Region Country of Origin
Kingsbarns Lowlands Scotland
Status Active Whisky Type Website Tours Available
Active 2014 - Present Malt Kingsbarns Tour Link
Manager Distiller Blender Owned by Parent Group
Douglas Clement Douglas Clement

Kingsbarns Timeline:

2009: Douglas Clement raises £100,000 funding to begin the development project

2012: The Scottish Government Food Processing Marketing and Co-operation Grant of £670,000 is awarded to the project

2013: Falling short of the £1.6 million needed Clement sells the company to the Wemyss family

2014: Visitor Centre was opened on St Andrews Day

2015: Distilling started in January

2018: The first whisky (3 years of age) will be ready in 2018

Useful Kingsbarns links:

Kingsbarns at ScotchWhisky

Kingsbarns at Whisky

Kingsbarns at MasterOfMalts

Kingsbarns at WhiskyExhange

Kingsbarns at Whiskybase

Interesting Kingsbarns links:

Kingsbarns distillery opens in Fife

Kingsbarns launches it's 3yo

SMWS Unfiltered profile

Cambo estate

Can I tour Kingsbarns?

Yes Kingsbarns distillery is tourable. On Trip Advisor the distillery has been rated as excellent by 383 of 518 tours to date. This gives Kingsbarns an overall rating of 4.5

Latest reviews

Misters Birthday by Alan S

Learning a bit of history about the kingdom of Fife that I did not know. The taste experience from the tour guide was also very informative about the different taste methods

Great Value by Chris E

Friendly staff and very knowledgable. We did both the whisky and gin tour. The distillery is in lovely surroundings. Great value for money and worth a visit if your into gin or whisky, you get chance to sample the variety of gin and whisky before you buy.

Excellent Tour by Dmvparker

Alan was an excellent tour guide, he was very friendly and easy to talk to. His tour was highly informative and we learned a lot from him. Thanks Alan!

Rating Reviews
Excellent 383
Very good 102
Average 24
Poor 10
Terrible 7