About Us

Our home is far from the quaint Highland distilleries that may come to mind when you think about whisky in Scotland. Formerly a bustling cotton mill that in its heyday employed 1500 people, the building and community of Deanston were facing uncertainty when it closed for good in 1965... enter our founder; Brodie Hepburn.

Our founder, Brodie Hepburn, is far from your average founder. A true pioneer, he saw huge potential in the battered old cotton mill, where others only saw challenges. He saw potential in the river Teith, with water soft enough for whisky, and the strength to power a community. He saw the people of Deanston town, with the passion and honest work ethic to become true whisky makers. Hepburn's took a risk and it paid off. The old cotton mill was transformed into a place perfect for whisky making.

The mighty River Teith is so much more than a water source. It's so powerful, it can fuel a distillery. The old cotton mill built a lade and installed one of the biggest waterwheels in Europe to harness its power. Then came electrical turbines in the 40s. Fast forward to today and we're still using turbines to generate electricity from the river. In fact, we generate enough energy to power the distillery, our offices, The Coffee Bothy, the Visitor Centre, and still have approximately 75% remaining to sell back to the National Grid! The River Teith is the literal power behind everything we create. But it’s more than our life source, it’s symbolic of our ambition.

Our community began with the cotton mill. It was one of the things that persuaded our founder to take the risk and build the distillery. A community with the passion and honest work ethic to become true whisky makers. From the kinship of our distillers, to our present day innovators, to our growing community across the world, there is community and character in every single bottle of Deanston whisky.

We source only the finest Scottish Barley, close in proximity to our distillery, in partnership with local farmers. It's not the norm to only use Scottish barley, but it's important to us. We use traditional, hands-on methods and fermentation that takes far longer, because it’s the right thing to do, transforming the grain into the waxy, soft, smooth highland single malt we're known for.

The process begins with water from the River Teith, which flows over granite, making it very soft and perfect for making whisky. With help from the original lade used by the mill, the water is directed towards the distillery for use in production and powering the turbines.

We only ever use Scottish grown crops, meaning all of our malted barley is sourced from local farmers, before being milled into grist and tested by hand, to ensure the perfect mix of quick and slow natural sugars.

Once milled, the ‘grist’ goes into our open- topped mash tun, one of a handful still in use in Scotland, where it is mixed with hot water. The sugars create a sweet liquid known as ‘wort’, which slowly drains through the perforated copper floor for fermentation. This is measured and meticulously recorded by hand.

The liquid then flows to the Wash Back for fermentation where nature works its magic. Yeast and wort sugars interact and turn into an alcohol, known as ‘wash’. This process takes on average 100 hours; this is unusually long and produces fruity flavours as well as many of the other intricate flavours that define a Deanston whisky.

When it’s ready, the ‘wash’ is then transferred to the wash stills and heated by large copper coils to encourage evaporation. As the vapours rise up and condense, they move to the spirit stills. The unique characteristics developed during fermentation are further enriched by the copper. Our whisky is twice distilled - first, in a wash still and then in a spirit still where it separates into three sections: the head, the tail and the 'heart of the run'. The 'heart' is the part that interests us; this is our 'middle' or 'spirit' cut. The heads and tails will be used in the next distillation.

This precious cut or 'new make' is transferred into the number one spirit vat where it is reduced with water from the River Teith to 63.5%. Our distilling team then decant the liquid into oak wood casks, which are placed into the cool weaving shed of the original mill to mature.