Eydent Distillery Approved for East Lothian Site
Published December 18, 2025 by John Fegan
The Scottish Lowlands are set to gain another distillery following planning approval for Eydent Distillery at East Mains in East Lothian, close to the established Glenkinchie site. The project has been granted permission in principle by East Lothian Council, though significant preparatory work remains before construction can begin.
Eydent Distillery is the project of Ollie Salvesen and Jack Mayo. Salvesen previously worked at Glenkinchie Distillery, bringing local operational experience, while Mayo comes from a consultancy background. Together they aim to establish a small scale distillery combining traditional production methods with modern operational planning.
The distillery itself is planned to be reassuringly small, the sort of place that produces about 140,000 bottles of whisky and gin a year and considers this quite enough responsibility for anyone. At first it will be run by five people, who will know where everything is and why it is broken. Over six years this number will rise to twelve, at which point no one will be entirely sure who moved the ladder.
Although permission to build has been granted, this does not mean that building may occur just yet. A biodiversity plan must first be produced to explain how local wildlife will be protected, enhanced and generally reassured. There must also be thorough examinations of the ground itself, which happens to sit on former coal mines and therefore has strong opinions about sudden structural change.
The studies exist to make quite sure that the ground is in a co-operative mood and capable of holding up a distillery without taking it personally. Only when the paperwork is convinced and the land itself appears satisfied will anyone be allowed to start building.
No one is prepared to guess at a timetable. The project will advance once environmental obligations, engineering assessments and regulatory approvals have all been completed, a sequence of events that rarely unfolds in quite the order anyone expects.