A taste of tradition in Falkirk

The family venture has seen the father and daughter build the distillery from scratch, and with George being a successful local businessman, is almost entirely self-funded.

“It’s not just unique. I think it’s remarkable,” says Fiona. The project has always been directed by the family and their values, Fiona continues. “All the businesses that my father’s been involved in, it’s all about family. My dad is now employing the grandchildren from the first round of people that worked for him. To me, whisky distillation should be about family. That’s what it was back in the day so we were trying to kind of instil that within what we do. We’ve got a very small team, but everybody cares about what they’re doing. They care about us, and we care about them, so there are good values there.”

However it’s not always been plain sailing for Fiona and her dad, having sunk countless hours and finances into the distillery trying to get it up and running.

The Stewart family also happened to stumble across somewhat of a unique problem when building the distillery. The team were set back four years when the acceptance of their planning permission was complicated by the presence of the Antonine Wall, a World Heritage Site just a stone’s throw from the distillery. The wall was built over a 12-year period from 142AD between the Firth of Clyde in the west and the Firth of Forth in the east, marking the most northernly point of Roman occupation in the UK. “Financially it was quite a setback as well as the four years to get planning,” says George. “And I think, to be honest now, some of the people who were against it, actually even Historic Scotland now, they’ve said it’s an asset and it’s turned out good. It looks the part and I think it adds to the history in the town as well.”

Falkirk Distillery only started producing new make spirit in 2021, but at a glance you could believe it has been embedded in the Lowland town for much longer.

The family also opted to build traditional dunnage warehouses on site, for reasons that exceeded surface looks, as Fiona explains. “With the traditional brick, it helps with the ventilation, which is incredibly important. And it gives you a much more even maturation process. So it’s not just in terms of heritage, but it’s also about the quality of spirit that we’re thinking about as well.”

The storage units are currently filled 90 per cent with bourbon barrels and 10 per cent in sherry casks. The warehouses took over six months for local masons to craft, which George says is well worth the extra effort.

“We’re trying to keep as much heritage as possible while giving it a feel-good factor for people who when they come here, recognise it as a distillery rather than just new buildings,” he says. “If a man who died 100 years ago came back here today and looked at that bonded warehouse, he would think it was built then. So that’s what we’ve done, we’ve kept all the heritage here and it’s all done with traditional brick.

But it isn’t just looks where Falkirk distillery tips its hat to the industry’s heritage.

Within the brand-new walls lies the distillery’s beating heart, steeped in history. Two 58-year-old stills from the silent Caperdonich distillery, purchased from the renowned still makers Forsyths of Rothes in Speyside, who had bought and salvaged the distillery and its equipment.

Accompanying the stills from Caperdonich is an impressively large 4.5 tonne traditional copper mash tun. So large in fact that the distillery roof couldn’t be fitted until the hefty tun was nestled inside its walls.

An old Diageo spirit safe and brand-new 34,000-litre washbacks complete the set, producing new make spirit, which is sweet, floral and herbal on the nose with flavours of sweet pears, mild spice and sweet hazelnut upon tasting.