Leith is a cool place, with a collection of some of the best craft beer breweries in Scotland. So when I found out that there was also a really interesting new distillery there, I was 100% sold. We visited on a Saturday, touring the distillery at lunchtime before heading back into town to visit Campervan, Newbarns, Lost in Leith, and a few other good pubs.
Distillery Feel: Port of Leith is an almost brand-new distillery. Opened in October 2023, they started creating whisky in February 2024. It is located on a site known as Whisky Quay, next to the Royal Yacht Britannia. This location is in Leith’s port area and looks out towards the Forth Lock. It is an interesting distillery because it is built on a very small footprint, so it is forced to be tall and slender, which gives it the feel of an industrial tower block in a film about a dystopian future.
This multi-story aspect is utilised by the distillery within its production process. It is a “gravity-fed’ distillery, meaning that the process starts at the top of the building and moves down through the floors until it becomes a whisky at the bottom. This is not only energy efficient, but it also offers great views out to sea.
Tour Style: We were taken from the bar and shop area, which is at the top of the building, down through the production floors, descending a flight of stairs each time we moved through a stage of the whisky-making process. We started with a small area that introduces the distillery’s founders and their heritage as students of whisky production at Heriot-Watt University. This small section felt personal and intimate and helped to ground us in the vision of the distillery and its founders. There is even a small distillation kit, which they used in some of their initial whisky-making experiments, which I thought was a lovely touch.
The rest of the tour was functional and largely interesting. I enjoyed the bottle your own new make part, which is something that I have not done in any other distillery.
Tasting: As Port of Leith is so young, it does not yet have whisky to offer its guests who visit. You can expect that around 2029/2030. For now, you taste a new make spirit, some spirits that reflect the cask types that the distillery is using (a port, a sherry and a blended whisky) that the distillery has created to showcase their talents. I enjoyed tasting these spirits as they were all tasty and unique, but some of my friends felt a little short-changed by this aspect of the tasting. They felt that a whisky tour should have focused more on whisky, maybe trying to find whiskies that match the future aspirations of Port of Leith instead.
Overall: Port of Leith Distillery is a fantastic space with an incredible view. The way the distillery has been put together to use the space in a thoughtful and creative way is reason enough to visit. Look out for the fermentation vessels that almost feel suspended in midair. At the moment, the whisky is still all potential and no result, so it might suit some people more to wait until this all feels a little more complete, but as it stands, I thought there was enough to mean that the tour still represented great value.
Link: https://www.leithdistillery.com/thetour