History

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Today Scotland’s distilleries are much less connected to the land - they have transformed into industrial scaled operations and brought significant wealth to the Scot’s pioneers that grew this industry.

In the case of Scotch Whisky this is not a bad thing as it has helped carry the reputation of Scotland to all corners of the globe and it has enabled Scotland to become one of the leading centres of excellence for producing aged spirits; the fermentation and distilling of ‘barley wash’, and maturation in oak casks of fresh ‘new make’ spirit is now far better understood than in the earlier days when local farmers ran the show.

However at Ladybank we want to combine the best of both these worlds; the intimacy of the small artisan producer and his often greater flexibility in creating a range of low-volume products, together with the opportunity to now draw on the greater understanding now present in Scotland in how to create the finest of spirits and myriad influences that can be achieved by carefully planned oak cask maturation.

While Europe’s famous wine producing regions, and wine making technology, became established over 2000 years ago, most famous spirit categories struggle to demonstrate any significant history that is more than 200 years old; Indeed prior to 1860 ‘distillate’ or distilled spirit was known as ‘waters’.

In France Brandy (from the Dutch word brandewijn or ‘burnt wine’) was known in the 1300’s, and Apple Brandy in the 1500’s, but distillation technology remained primitive. Italy’s famous distillate ‘Grappa’ was first distilled in the north east Italian town of Bassano del Grappa in the late 1700’s.