Inside Kythe Distillery: The Highland Project Chasing a Flavor That Modern Scotland Forgot
Somewhere in the rolling farmland outside Blairgowrie, Perthshire, a wood fire is burning under a copper pot still. It is not a romantic affectation. It is not a marketing stunt. It is, according to the three men who spent fourteen years planning this moment, the only honest way to make the whisky they are after — a style so thoroughly erased by the economics of the modern spirits industry that most drinkers alive today have never encountered it. Kythe Distillery is a fully independent Scottish distillery conceived to revive old-style Scottish single malt whisky, and it commenced production in 2026 at the forefront of a movement to consciously revive historic methods — deliberately re-creating the levels of quality and distinctiveness of character not seen in Scottish malt whisky production since the 1960s and earlier decades.
This is not a story about nostalgia for its own sake. It is a story about a specific set of flavors — waxy, richly fruited, deep and complex — that were once the hallmark of Highland distilling and then, quietly, were not. It is about three people who became obsessed with understanding why those flavors disappeared, and what it would take to bring them back. And it is about what that project reveals about how an entire industry lost its way.
A Concept Fourteen Years in the Making
The project began fourteen years ago with initial conversations between writer and independent bottler Angus MacRaild, former Berry Bros & Rudd reserve whisky manager Jonny McMillan, and Hong Kong's Qing Club founder Aaron Chan. Those are three names that carry genuine weight in the world of serious Scotch. MacRaild has spent much of his professional life hunting down bottles from Scotland's lost distilleries, building a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable voices on the subject of old-style malt whisky. McMillan came up through the trade at the highest level, handling rare and allocated bottles at one of London's most respected wine and spirits merchants. Chan, meanwhile, represents a constituency that has become increasingly important to the global Scotch market.
"Over the past ten years, Hong Kong's whisky fans have been catching up very fast when it comes to Scotch whisky culture," Chan has said. "We have started specialised whisky bars, whisky retailers, importers, exporters and independent bottlers. The final piece of the puzzle is for us to help create a whisky distillery in Scotland — Kythe is that distillery." That global coalition — a Scottish writer-bottler, an English trade veteran, and a Hong Kong club founder — is itself a statement about where serious whisky culture now lives.
Kythe, a Scots word meaning to show, demonstrate, or prove, is a concept fourteen years in the making. The name is deliberate. These are not people interested in approximation or suggestion. They intend to demonstrate something — that the old flavors were real, that they can be re-created, and that the only path to them runs through the same methods that produced them in the first place.
The trio began building Kythe Distillery in 2024. The distillery was conceived in 2014 and completed construction in summer 2025, entirely funded by a global group of whisky enthusiasts rather than institutional investors. It raised £1.7 million ahead of its first production run, with limited cask purchasing opportunities available to private buyers. The fact that this project was built on enthusiast money rather than venture capital or corporate backing is not a trivial detail. It means there are no quarterly targets, no cost-efficiency mandates, no pressure from a parent company to hit production volume at the expense of quality. The people who funded this project did so because they want a specific thing, and they are willing to wait for it.
The Farm, the Barns, and the Equipment
Setting and Infrastructure
The Perthshire-based Kythe Distillery, which has announced that it has begun production of its single malt, is located at Hills of Bendochy Farm, a working farm near Blairgowrie, and occupies two former farm barns. The site incorporates a mash house with a one-tonne mash tun, a 6,000-litre wash still, a 4,000-litre spirit still and on-site warehousing, all converted from existing farm outbuildings. The conversion of working farm buildings is itself historically appropriate — many of Scotland's great nineteenth-century distilleries began in exactly that fashion, repurposed agricultural structures in the Highlands and Perthshire where grain was grown and water was clean and cold.
Annual production is targeted at 60,000 litres of pure alcohol. That number places Kythe firmly in the craft category — large enough to be a viable business over time, small enough that every decision about process and ingredient has genuine impact on the final spirit. At 60,000 LPA, there is no room to hide behind volume.
The Still That Changes Everything
The single most consequential piece of equipment at Kythe is the wash still, and the way it is heated. Kythe's direct wood-fired still is unusual, as most modern whisky distilleries use more efficient steam coils to create their spirit. The shift away from direct firing — first to steam coils, then to ever more precise computer-controlled systems — was driven entirely by efficiency and consistency. Steam coils are cheaper to operate, easier to control, and far less demanding on the people working them. What they cannot replicate, according to Kythe's founders, is the particular thermal interaction between the flame, the copper, and the liquid inside the still that produces certain flavor compounds associated with old Highland malts.
"It's incredibly challenging to work with direct wood fire," explains MacRaild. "There's a lack of control, uncomfortable working conditions and at its heart it's messy, but what we do see as a result of our persistence is a spirit that is reviving lost flavours for the future." That willingness to absorb operational difficulty in pursuit of a flavor outcome is precisely what separates Kythe from most of the distilleries that have opened in Scotland over the past decade. Many have been built on the language of craft and tradition while quietly optimizing for efficiency at every turn. Kythe is doing the opposite.
Following mashing and fermentation, distillation occurs in a wood-fired wash still, accompanied by an electrically heated spirit still, both utilizing worm tubs for condensation. Worm tubs — coiled copper pipes submerged in cold water tanks — are another piece of heritage technology that most modern distilleries have replaced with shell-and-tube condensers. They produce a heavier, more sulfurous new make spirit that, given time in cask, develops into the meaty, complex character associated with old-school Highland malts. Their presence at Kythe is not an accident.
The Grain, the Yeast, and the Long Ferment
Heritage Barley and Floor Malting
The philosophy at Kythe extends backward through every stage of production, beginning with the grain itself. The heritage two-row barley variety is floor malted and fermented for up to two weeks in wooden washbacks using a combination of spent brewer's yeast from Belhaven Brewery and M strain distiller's yeast. Floor malting — spreading wet, germinating barley across a stone floor and turning it by hand — was the industry standard for centuries before industrial drum maltsters took over. It is slower, more labor-intensive, and produces malt with a distinctive character tied to the specific variety of grain and the conditions of the maltings floor. Most distilleries today source their malt from large commercial maltsters who process barley in bulk.
The distilling team collaborates closely with local farmers to procure heritage and brewing barley varieties that are rich in protein. Protein-rich heritage barleys were the norm in Scottish distilling before the industry shifted to high-yield, low-protein modern varieties optimized for maximum alcohol output per ton. The old barleys produced less alcohol but more flavor — a trade-off the industry made quietly and without much public acknowledgment over several decades.
Yeast: The Forgotten Flavor Variable
If barley is the most discussed ingredient in whisky, yeast is the most underappreciated. Kythe's approach to fermentation may be the most forensically historical aspect of the entire project. Kythe has returned to the traditional method of sourcing yeast, working with Scotland's oldest working brewery, Belhaven, to pitch spent brewer's yeast for all fermentations. Following archival research into historic Scotch malt whisky production, the distillery co-pitches with the original 1950s pressed M strain distiller's yeast.
This use of grain and yeasts that were much more common in Scottish distilling in the 1950s and 1960s is intended to create a rich, exotic fruit flavour in the matured spirit. The relationship between yeast strain and flavor is one of the most complex and least publicly understood topics in distilling. Different yeast strains produce different ratios of esters, aldehydes, and fusel alcohols during fermentation — and those compounds, transformed by distillation and then further altered by years in cask, become the flavor of the whisky. The M strain yeast that Kythe has sourced is not a reconstruction or a modern approximation. It is the actual strain used in mid-century Scottish distilling, preserved and revived for this specific purpose.
The microbial shuffle of traditional spent brewer's yeast is balanced by the careful, alcohol-creating deployment of original 1950s M strain distiller's yeast. This fermentation regime was arrived at after extensive revision and archival research into historic Scottish malt whisky production methods stretching back to the 1920s, drawing specifically from critical production eras at distilleries lauded as the source of some of the greatest examples of old-style malt whisky.
The Long Fermentation
Kythe uses traditional wooden washbacks, with the capacity to ferment for up to two weeks for greater flexibility and experimentation. Modern distilleries typically ferment for between 48 and 72 hours — enough time for the primary yeast fermentation to complete. Extended fermentation allows bacterial cultures in the wooden washbacks to continue working on the liquid after the yeast has finished, producing additional flavor compounds — particularly fruity esters — that shorter fermentation cannot generate. Two weeks is an extreme commitment. The opportunity cost in terms of throughput is significant. For Kythe, it is simply what the flavor requires.
What Was Lost — and Why It Matters
The Great Simplification of Scotch
To understand what Kythe is chasing, it helps to understand what happened to Scottish whisky over the second half of the twentieth century. The project addresses a long-standing gap in the Scotch whisky market. As industrial pressures reshaped production across Scotland over the past fifty years — reducing fermentation times, switching to high-yield barley, and abandoning direct-fire distillation — the distinctive qualities that once defined great Highland malts were largely lost. Kythe's founders believe those qualities can be revived through uncompromising attention to ingredients, technique, and time.
During the last century, almost half of Scotland's distilleries were shut down, with many destroyed or forgotten. Global recession, world wars, and overproduction all played a role. Now whisky makers find inspiration in the flavor profiles of closed distilleries. The consolidation of the industry into a handful of large corporate groups accelerated the homogenization of production. When a company owns twenty distilleries, the incentive is to rationalize — to find commonalities of process, shared suppliers, standardized equipment. The result, over time, is a narrowing of the flavor spectrum available to drinkers.
Kythe is built around a singular mission: to recreate the characterful, wax-and-fruit-forward style of Highland single malts that disappeared from Scotland's distilleries in the 1970s and 1980s, as the industry pursued efficiency over quality. The founders are explicit about this diagnosis. Efficiency was the disease, and the lost flavors were its casualty. MacRaild has said the goal was to make "whisky without compromise; to create something beautiful," adding simply: "We believe efficiency is the enemy of character."
The Wax-Forward Style and Its Disappearance
The specific character Kythe is chasing — described variously as waxy, fruity, rich, and exotic — was once a regional hallmark. Highland malts from the 1950s and 1960s, as they turn up at auction today, show a particular combination of qualities: dense, almost oily texture; complex tropical fruit notes from long fermentation; an animal, almost farmyard depth from sulfurous copper interaction; and a fundamental integration of wood and spirit that develops without the spirit needing to hide behind aggressive cask influence.
The chief focus over time will be weighted towards gentle refill wood that preserves and foregrounds the inherent beauty and personality of the spirit. "Ours is a distillate that has no need to hide behind the weight of overly active oak." That last sentence is a pointed comment on a widespread tendency in contemporary whisky production — the use of heavily active first-fill casks to mask a neutral or undistinctive new make spirit. When the spirit itself has enough going on, it does not need the wood to do the heavy lifting.
MacRaild's expertise in this specific area runs deep. As an old and rare whisky specialist, he has described certain historical bottlings as "a distillate driven malt whisky, with minimal wood influence and one of a style which could have been produced any time in Scotland up until the 1950s." That is exactly the tradition Kythe is working to continue.
The Maturation Strategy and the Long Wait
Kythe is now laying down its spirit, primarily in refill ex-Bourbon and Sherry casks, which will be matured on site at the distillery. The team anticipates bottling its first release in around eight years, although the whisky will be released only when they believe the spirit is truly ready. Eight years is not a hard minimum — it is an estimate based on how long the founders expect the spirit to need before it has become what it is supposed to be. The company plans to release its first single malt at between five and eight years of age, guided by the distillate's development rather than a fixed timeline.
The reliance on refill casks is consistent with the broader production philosophy. Old-style Highland malts from the 1960s were predominantly matured in used casks — often ex-Sherry butts that had already held several fills of spirit. The vanilla-forward, heavily oaked style that dominates much of today's whisky market is a product of the American bourbon industry's convention of using new charred oak barrels, combined with the Scotch industry's marketing discovery that the flavors of first-fill bourbon and sherry wood are immediately crowd-pleasing. Kythe is betting that the spirit it is making will reward a subtler approach to wood.
Historical Context: The Broader Revival Movement
Brora, Port Ellen, and the Institutional Side of Revival
Kythe arrives in the context of a broader, if fragmented, movement to recover what Scottish whisky once was. The most prominent examples of lost distillery revival have come from within the establishment. The reopening of Brora marked the first revival of a formerly lost name in whisky, having closed in 1983 during one of the most challenging periods for the industry. Port Ellen was heralded as one of the most iconic of the lost distilleries, remembered fondly by whisky lovers after shuttering in 1983, having won legions of fans across the world for its smoky Islay whiskies produced since 1825. Both of those revivals were corporate projects, funded by Diageo, executed with significant resources and institutional expertise.
Boutique operations such as the Lost Distillery Company and some of Scotland's largest producers like Diageo are in the process of reviving lost distilleries, conducting social surveys of distilling towns and their drinking habits to uncover the techniques that made whisky taste as it did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What makes Kythe different from almost all of these projects is that it is not attempting to revive a specific lost distillery. It is attempting to revive a lost production paradigm — a set of techniques, ingredients, and values that once produced a particular flavor profile across multiple distilleries. The goal is not to make whisky that tastes like any one closed distillery. It is to make whisky that belongs to the same sensory world as the great mid-century Highlands malts that now trade for thousands of dollars a bottle at auction.
Independent Backing and the Role of the Collector Community
This venture is the brainchild of passionate whisky aficionados who have entirely funded the project, seeking to revive the tastes, flavors, and qualities of long-lost, genuine Highland malts. Among the esteemed supporters is Ronnie Cox, a forty-five-year veteran of the whisky industry, who will take on the role of brand director emeritus. Cox's involvement adds a dimension of industry-inside credibility. He has seen the changes described by the Kythe founders from within the trade itself — watched the gradual shift toward efficiency and the corresponding narrowing of flavor, and evidently concluded that what Kythe is attempting is worth his name and energy.
The funding model — private enthusiasts rather than institutional money — has direct precedents in the bourbon world. American craft distilleries from the early 2010s were similarly financed by groups of enthusiasts who felt that the mainstream industry was not producing the spirits they wanted to drink. Some of those projects failed. Others produced remarkable whiskey and forced the larger producers to pay attention. The analogy is imperfect, but the underlying dynamic — consumers so dissatisfied with the available product that they fund alternative production — is the same.
What the Kythe Project Means for Serious Enthusiasts
A Real-Time Experiment in Whisky Archaeology
For the American enthusiast community — which has developed a sophisticated appetite for old and rare Scotch over the past decade, particularly through the auction market — Kythe represents something unusual: the chance to watch a whisky archaeology project unfold in real time. The people behind it are not academics speculating about how historical production worked. They are practitioners who have done the archival research, sourced the actual yeast strains, commissioned the appropriate equipment, and fired up the stills. The question of whether they succeed will be answered in cask, over the next several years.
As MacRaild has put it: "It's incredibly challenging to work with direct wood fire; there's a lack of control, uncomfortable working conditions and, at its heart, it's messy. But what we do see as a result of our persistence is a spirit that is reviving lost flavours for the future. We are creating something different at Kythe and hope that the whisky community will love what we are trying to do and the spirit that we are making for them."
McMillan has added: "Kythe is born of a love for old-style whisky and a lost lexicon of flavours that has largely disappeared from modern whisky making." A lexicon is an apt word. What is at stake here is not merely a flavor profile but an entire vocabulary of sensation — a range of experiences that, once gone, cannot be recovered from contemporary production. The only existing specimens are in bottles scattered across private collections and auction catalogues worldwide, most of them priced out of reach for all but the most committed collectors. Kythe is making a bet that those experiences can be brought forward, made accessible again, and that a meaningful number of serious drinkers will recognize what they have been missing.
The Production Timeline and Practical Expectations
Anyone who finds Kythe compelling should understand the math of what they are signing up for. Production began in 2026. The first release is targeted somewhere between five and eight years out from the first distillation. That means roughly 2031 at the earliest, potentially 2034 or beyond before the whisky is considered genuinely ready. In the meantime, the first casks of Kythe's spirit will be laid down this autumn. Those casks will sit on-site in the converted farm buildings, watched over by the team, sampled periodically, and released only when the founders determine the spirit has reached the threshold they were aiming for when they started this conversation fourteen years ago.
McMillan has said: "Kythe is born of a love for old-style whisky and a lost lexicon of flavours that has largely disappeared from modern whisky making. It is a huge labour of love for us." That phrase — labour of love — tends to get used loosely in whisky marketing. At Kythe, it is accurate in a very specific sense. The direct-fired still is genuinely harder to work with. The long fermentation genuinely ties up equipment for weeks rather than days. The heritage barley genuinely yields less alcohol per ton. The floor malting genuinely demands more human time and attention. Every decision that points toward the old flavors is simultaneously a decision that makes the operation harder and more expensive. That is what makes the project credible, and what makes its eventual output worth watching for.
A Challenge to the Industry's Founding Assumptions
The deeper argument that Kythe is making — through its equipment choices, its ingredient sourcing, and its production timeline — is that the Scottish whisky industry made a category error somewhere in the 1970s and 1980s. The error was treating efficiency as a neutral variable, a way of doing the same thing at lower cost. What the Kythe founders argue, and what the historical record of auction results seems to support, is that efficiency was not neutral. It changed what whisky was. It narrowed the range of available flavors, smoothed out the rough edges that were actually sources of complexity, and replaced a diverse ecosystem of distinctive regional characters with a more homogenized product that was easier to make and easier to sell to a broad market.
McMillan has said clearly: "This has always been about taking our own path to pay homage to brewing and distilling techniques that have been left behind in the modern age of whisky making." That homage is being paid not in words or labels or vintage-themed packaging, but in wood fires and two-week fermentations and heritage barley from Perthshire farms. Whether the result justifies the fourteen-year wait remains to be seen. But the seriousness of the attempt is not in question.
Kythe is not the only project working in this space, but it may be the most uncompromising. It sits at a particular intersection — serious enough in its historical research to be taken seriously by collectors and scholars, small enough in its production to make every batch a genuine expression of its methods, and independent enough in its funding to refuse the compromises that institutional backing would eventually demand. The first bottles, whenever they arrive, will be among the most scrutinized releases in recent Scotch history. For enthusiasts who have spent years chasing old Highland malts through auction catalogues, they will represent something more than whisky. They will represent proof — Kythe, in the old Scots sense — that what was lost can, with enough effort and enough fire, be found again.
