【Exclusive Interview】Part 2: Ian Stirling – Port of Leith Distillery

Unlike traditional whisky-making, Port of Leith particularly commits towards perfecting fermentation as they believe in the potential of complexity that can bring in whisky. With background in the wine industry, Ian Stirling, co-owner and co-founder of the Port of Leith Distillery, certainly understands the importance of fermentation in terms of flavor development, which often gets overlooked as the industry focuses more on production efficiency. With their unique methods to create and refine whiskies, Port of Leith is one of the very few innovative whisky makers that truly commits towards complex flavor.

Exclusively interviewing Ian Stirling, this two-part article reveals the back story of the construction and establishment of the distillery and its philosophy. Part 2 of this article further dives into Ian and Paddy Fletcher, lifelong friends as well as co-owner/co-founder of the Port of Leith Distillery, and explore their philosophy of whisky making. Ian then explained their project of the Quality Control Division as well as the future of the distillery by revealing his love and excitement towards whisky production.

Co-founding & Co-owning a new Distillery

Ian and Paddy: friend/partner/siblings

Dear WHISKY：
How well do the two of you work together in terms of skill sets and personalities?

Ian：
Our skills are fairly different. I am more creative and have always been part of the commercial and production side, while Paddy takes place in more of the finance and operation side of the business. Our skills complement each other quite well, and there is a bit of crossover, obviously, which works well together. On top of that, we have the advantage of being friends, which allows us to have big arguments and stay honest with each other. This saves a lot of time because you can just get straight into the matter.

Dear WHISKY：
What is it like to have a business with your best friend?

Ian：
It’s a lot of fun to start a business with a friend. I think I couldn’t do this without him, and he couldn’t do this without me. We complement very well. On top of that, we always compete with each other like siblings, competing and looking after each other, making sure the other one is happy.

Roles at the Port of Leith Distillery

Dear WHISKY：
What is your role at the distillery?

Ian：
I am always very focused on the creative side. What we are making and future brand concepts are the things I care about the most. This includes ensuring the quality of our tours and services, and everything is working properly. Also, I’m making sure all the company structures are properly in place to ensure everyone is happy and fun. This includes 70 people working for us and each independent investor who has funded us. Therefore, my life is basically non-stop meetings and communicating with each and every one of them.

Dear WHISKY：
What is Paddy’s role at the distillery?

Ian：
If I’m on the creative side, Paddy is very focused on the finance side. The company is in a huge transition right now, going from being almost like a construction company and a fundraising business to a production business. So, at the moment, he’s very focused on making sure that all the numbers are working properly with the grain coming in, the production process and we have higher gas prices and all these different things, so there’s a lot to deal with.

Managing the company

Dear WHISKY：
How do you cope with this busy period as a start-up distillery?

Ian：
It is, of course, a busy period, but it is very exciting and fun at the moment. We created our main company, Muckle Brig, with the purpose of having fun. We love working and running this business. We make products that we love not always focusing on being commercial. We know that if we love them, others would, too.

Dear WHISKY：
In terms of your employees, what type of people does your company attract the most?

Ian：
Since we are located in Edinburgh and quite high profile, we have always been very fortunate to get many applicants wanting to work for us. Therefore, we have a talented team, such as people from Herriot Watt University, one of the only places in the world that studies brewing and distilling. There is a good mix of different generations, driven by their passion and a sense of mission about what we are doing. You can feel the passion from the people who work here, so we want to be a place where people can come and learn and kick-start their careers.

Dear WHISKY：
How do you connect and bond your employees?

Ian：
We have very strong values as a company. If you go to mucklebrig.com, our corporate website, you will see that we have seven values, and we operate the company by those values. Hence, we ensure that everybody understands our mission and they power on through that. Therefore, to some extent, it’s easy for us and exciting for everyone.

Dear WHISKY：
What else do you value especially as the whisky distillery?

Ian：
Because whisky production is a very long-term process, we also want to ensure that people feel they have autonomy and are not micromanaged. I think this is very important in business, and if they understand the values of the company, then they can make decisions and have autonomy. When you can trust people to do their jobs, you don’t have to watch them 24 hours a day. What we truly try to give people is a lot of autonomy and a lot of freedom to do their jobs.

Philosophy of their whisky

Converting wine-making experience/knowledge to whisky

Dear WHISKY：
What made you want to bring elements of wine-making into whisky production?

Ian：
I realized how the whisky industry has become very focused on the production process in industrial terms. The main focal point has been efficiency and maximizing profits, sometimes forgetting that they are dealing with an organic product.

Dear WHISKY：
What does the Port of Leith Distillery focus on?

Ian：
We decided to put efficiency to one side and focus very much on quality and flavour, and this very much is a wine-making attitude. Wine has developed unique and special ways to maintain its quality, while the quantity of the grapes or the weather greatly influences the product; implementing that idea into whisky seemed interesting.

Style: Inconsistency

Dear WHISKY：
What else do you do differently from other distilleries? 

Ian：
Many distilleries focus on trying to be so consistent with their products year to year. We want to have a style, but we don’t want to make the same product forever. Therefore, we plan to put vintages on the whisky bottles in the future. This way, we can keep our eye on the evolution and variation of the whisky. Putting efficiency and consistency to one side and focusing entirely on flavour is really what we are bringing from wine into the whisky industry.

Dear WHISKY：
Is there a specific taste that you are aiming for, even while it does not achieve consistency?

Ian：
Although it might not taste the exact same every year, I want our whisky to be recognizable. In order to achieve that, although I don’t know exactly what it would look like or how it will be formed, but the whisky has to have a DNA that sets the style. 

Inspiration of Ian and Paddy

Favourite whisky and whisky maker

Dear WHISKY：
What is your favourite whisky?

Ian：
My favourite whisky, that inspired Paddy and I, was Bruichladdich. The reason for that is because it was founded by two people who came from the wine industry. They brought in new ideas from the wine industry, such as terroir, into the whisky world. We also love Laddie (Nickname for Bruichladdich) because they are affordable. Paddy and I started this business as people who love whisky, and we were always frustrated with the price of a bottle. For us, it is important to keep whisky affordable so it is not only for rich people and you can have a very good quality product at an affordable price. These are why I admire Laddie so much. 

Dear WHISKY：
Those concepts and philosophy sound much aligned with what Port of Leith seeks.

Ian：
One of the two founders of Bruichladdich, Simon Coughlin, actually is a very important mentor to Paddy and I. He not only invested in us but also helped us a lot as we developed.

Whisky Production

Striving for the best flavour possible

Dear WHISKY：
Which production process does the Port of Leith Distillery consider most important?

Ian：
In our view, everything is important. We have been very focused on fermentation, but we have also created this relationship with the farm to control the grain. On top of that, we have a relationship with our wine producers, so we can select the barrels according to fermentation-specific criteria.

Dear WHISKY：
How did you end up with the current fermentation process?

Ian：
We have now done three years of research with Harriet Watt University, where we tried 24 different yeasts and analyzed hundreds of spirits. Then, we brought those data to the Glasgow Distillery, where we used larger equipment to produce pool-scale batches to ensure we had a good idea, going into the distillery, of how we wanted to ferment our first production.

Dear WHISKY：
Have you found the ultimate recipe to stick to?

Ian：
We realized from our research program that there is still so much to learn and so many things to try. Therefore, while we are producing in 2024, we will also continue more tests and maybe change the way in 2025, but so far, what we have done in establishing our distillery has given us the mechanisms to control every element.

Experimenting with yeasts, the base pallets

Dear WHISKY：
How do you select the yeasts?

Ian：
From all the experiments we conducted, we finalized two yeasts: Belgian yeast, which produces a soft classic new make with barley notes, and the Norwegian Voss Kveik yeast, which gives dried and red fruits flavoured. The idea is to get two different yeasts and produce two different spirits, which then get blended to create our single malt. Then, we will combine all those distinct notes into a complex single spirit, so what yeasts are creating is a pallet of various flavours.

Dear WHISKY：
Will those yeasts be the only ones you use?

Ian：
Although we found two yeasts we love in the laboratory, we will keep trying new yeasts as well and might swap them in the future if something else performs better. On the note of experiments, we actually found that Voss Kveik yeast is better for shorter fermentation. Therefore, we are going to adjust that this year. Like so, that is the approach that we will take for fermentation, keep evolving, trying, and testing as we go.

Dear WHISKY：
What do your fermentation facilities look like?

Ian：
We use stainless steel wash backs since we change yeasts quite often, it is very important to have fresh start and be able to have full control. Something unique to us would be our fermentation vats, which we put cooling jackets on to control the temperature of our plantation. This setup is more common in the beer industry and rarely seen in the whisky world. We always say we are going into production without all the answers but with the ability to answer all the questions. 

Quality Control Division

Letting people experience the gist of whisky production

Dear WHISKY：
What is the Quality Control Division(QCD)?

Ian：
QCD is an eight-year subscription that allows our customers to experience the maturation process almost as if they are part of this production process. We produce whisky with three different yeasts, and for the first year, we have chosen two yeasts out of those three to make two spirits out of them. Subscribers would receive two samples each year all the way up to eight years and see how whisky evolves in the barrel.

Dear WHISKY：
How did you come up with the idea of QCD?

Ian：
As most new distilleries come up with this founders club that gives people special bottles or something, we wanted to do things differently. It came from the idea of me and Paddy always being interested in the blender’s room full of little bottle samples whenever we go visit other distilleries. QCD is a way to share that fascinating experience with people outside of the distillery.

Dear WHISKY：
How many people are subscribed as of now (As of November 2024)?

Ian：
We have around 200 subscribers at the moment. Almost all of them are from the UK since we cannot send those samples outside of the country.

Port of Leith Distillery Bar

Bar at the top of the distillery

Dear WHISKY：
At the very top of the distillery, we heard that you have a beautiful bar.
What are the concepts of the Bar?

Ian：
We wanted to make one of the best whisky bars. Therefore, we selected a range of whiskies from around the world. These are the whiskies that are doing interesting new things, which inspire us as great examples of a particular philosophy to learn from. We also have our sherry, port, champagne, and other products from the Leith Export Company.

Dear WHISKY：
What are the most popular drinks at your bar?

Ian：
It is the whisky from the Leith Export Company that we recently launched called Table Whisky, the idea of which is again borrowed from the world of wine. When you go to a restaurant, you can normally order a bottle of table wine, a restaurant’s house wine. Like so, we created table whisky, an easy-drinking single-grain scotch whisky that has proven to be the most popular.

Dear WHISKY：
Do you serve food as well?

Ian：
We serve small plates of locally inspired foods. Although Scotland doesn’t necessarily have a great cooking tradition, it has a tradition of good ingredients, such as fresh fish, meats, and farmed goods. Therefore, in time, we have learned how to cook more recently, Scottish food has become a lot better. Everything on our menu has a slight local taste, whether it’s the ingredients or the recipe idea.

Future Prospects

Dear WHISKY：
When would the Port of Leith Distillery reach its full production capacity?

Ian：
In terms of production, it will probably be by the end of 2024. And because we will mature them for eight years, the first release of our single malt whisky would be approximately in 2032 or 2033. 

Dear WHISKY：
What is the next goal of the Port of Leith Distillery?

Ian：
It would be getting into full production. We’re still just sort of gearing up, so we want to be filling casks. Honestly, it has been a 10-year journey just to open the whisky distillery, so we need a few years to get as many visitors as possible to help pay for the whisky production. Then, we will focus on the whisky to ensure we make the best product possible. Once we’re happy with that, have a good rhythm, and have a good research program in place, we can look at future plans.

Dear WHISKY：
What would be the foreseeable future of the company and yourself?

Ian：
As a company, we have lots of ambitions. We want to build another whisky distillery, and I won’t say much more about it, but we have many other products that we want to create. I’m 40, and my business partner is 41; we’re still quite young. So we still have lots of missions to tackle and do other things.

At Last

As the world awaits its single malt whisky to release, Port of Leith Distillery captivates many by refining its products and services. Two life-long friend, whisky enthusiasts’ commitment and devotion towards creating the most complicated and inconsistent whisky can be experienced through joining their tour or QCD subscription. By focusing on fermentation and understanding its mechanism from Wine-maker’s distinct experiences, Port of Leith’s taste is evolving with its brand to its truly unique stage.