Whisky had not been made in Stirling for 170 years when we started. The last of the old town distilleries closed in 1852, and for the lifetimes that followed, the town that sits under one of Scotland's great castles made no whisky at all. We are a family business, and putting that right has been the whole point.
We are the smallest whisky distillery in Scotland. We make about 20,000 litres a year, by hand, in the Old Smiddy at the foot of Stirling Castle. That is tiny next to the big malt houses, and it is deliberate. I can stand at the still and taste the spirit as it runs, make the cut by nose and by feel, and keep every cask where I can see it. You cannot do that at scale.
The clearest thing we have to show for it so far is our new make, the clear, unaged heart of the whisky before it goes into oak. In 2025 it was named Best Scottish New Make Spirit at the World Whiskies Awards. I am proud of that one, because new make is the honest test of a distillery: there is no cask to hide behind, just the spirit as we made it. It is bottled at a strength you can actually taste the character in, and because it is not aged it cannot legally be called whisky yet, which is why you will only ever taste it here, at the distillery.
The whisky itself is maturing now. Our own single malt is sleeping in oak a few feet from where it was distilled, and the first bottling comes in 2027. Until then, if you want to drink Stirling whisky, we also release single casks under our Sons of Scotland range, mature malts we select and bottle ourselves rather than distil, so there is always something from us in the glass. You can see the current releases on our whisky page.
If you want to understand a distillery, taste its new make and watch the malt maturing. You can do both with us, in the room where it happens, under the castle. That is a thing almost no one else can offer, and it is the reason to come to Stirling.
Hugo McCann is Head of Production at Stirling Distillery, the smallest whisky distillery in Scotland, in the Old Smiddy beneath Stirling Castle. He distils the gin and the new make by hand and looks after the single malt as it matures toward its first release in 2027. Stirling Distillery is family run.
