"Every grace" at Kingsbarns distillery
The oldest highlanders may remember the days when you could go on a distillery tour in Scotland, enjoy a dram of whisky at the end and not pay a penny. Today you have to pay a minimum of £10 for a basic tour, and often significantly more. When the plan is to visit more than a dozen distilleries during a single stay in Scotland, the money spent can grow to sizable sums. If, in addition, we treat ourselves to two or three special tastings, it can get steep on the wallet. Can this be remedied?
An interesting initiative was shown by the distillery Kingsbarns, which, as an experiment, offered the possibility of self-pricing the service received and setting the amount to be paid by the guests themselves. In other words, we go on a tour of the distillery, get two drams of whiskey to taste, and in the end decide for ourselves how much we want to pay for it.
According to the distillery's owners, the past few years have significantly affected many people financially, and the outlook for the near future does not promise to improve at all. That's why such a move was decided in the hope of also making the opportunity to visit the distillery available to those who, due to rising costs around them, would have to give it up.
The "Pay What You Like" distillery tour option is available once a week, on Sundays at 10:30 a.m., and is expected to remain on offer until the end of March next year. What happens next certainly depends on the results of this experiment.
Distillery Kingsbarns is located in the historic county of Fife, slightly north of Edinburgh, near the town of St. Andrews. It was launched in 2014 by the Wemyss family, known for independent bottling. Shortly after whisky production began, Darnley's Gin production began in a building on the same property. 2018 saw the launch of the first inaugural edition of Kingsbarns whisky, and just a year later the first permanent offering hit the market in the form of Dream to Dram single malt whisky. Since then, several more limited editions have seen the light of day, as well as a second whisky that is part of the permanent core offering, Balcomie, matured in oloroso sherry casks.
Kingsbarns it operates in historic farm buildings adapted for the purpose, and its visit is an interesting option for tourists traveling in this part of Scotland. It is worth recalling that, according to the division used by the Scotch Whisky Association, the historic county of Fife is in the Lowlands region and is one of a string of new distilleries launched here over the past decade. Nearby, the new headquarters of Eden Mill, also in operation since 2014, is just being built; a little to the east you'll find Lindores Abbey distilleries, InchDairnie, Aberargie and the "doyenne" of the new wave of Lowlands distilleries, the unassuming Daftmill (zał. 2005).
Although Kingsbarns is a young distillery with a small market record, the current offerings of the House of Whisky Online include several editions of the whisky produced there. Those interested are encouraged to visit and see for themselves on their own palate what this distillery is also trying to seduce whisky lovers with.
[20.11.2022 / photo: Kingsbarns]