Inside the Scottish waterside distillery opening this summer with stunning rooftop bar views

This eye-catching look was, for island distilleries, done so that deliveries by boat would be made to the right location. These days satellite navigation will do most of the hard work, unless you are heading to Guardbridge in St Andrews to the new Eden Mill distillery, in which the large black building with huge branding in white will come in handy.

Based on The University of St Andrews' Eden Campus, the distillery cuts a striking, tall figure, on the bank of the Eden estuary. The Scotsman visited while construction was very much still underway, but could get an idea of how the spaces were shaping up.

Rennie Donaldson, chief executive at Eden Mill, explained how the distillery had become known as the ‘Willy Wonka chocolate factory’ of builds, saying: “Our architect describes the design of the building and inside as the Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in the sense that you’ll be compressed down into a space and then you open a door and there’s a vast expansion into the full height of the building.”

Once operational - the team are confident that will be by this summer - visitors can choose between a gin or whisky tour, visit the retail space and enjoy drinks in the top floor bar, which has stunning views across the water. There will eventually be a cafe and capacity to host private events and functions.

As with all new builds, Eden Mill are working towards being as sustainable as possible, something they have teamed up with the university on. All electricity will be sourced from renewable sources including the iniversity's own solar array farm and carbon dioxide (CO2” from the fermentation will be captured and re-used by the university.

Mr Donaldson explained what visitors can expect when the distillery opens - an experience he said had been a “fantastic journey”. He said: “There will be a visitor experience, retail space and a [rooftop] bar on the top floor. Combined with that we’ll have whisky and gin tours available to the public to give people a full experience.

“[That’s] as well as having a cask store on site, which will house the first 300 casks that we will fill. We’re on track to start filling our first casks by the middle of March, so we’re really excited to get that underway.

“Sustainability is a core part of our business and brand values. We’ve partnered with MiAlgae who will use the effluent from our whisky process in producing sustainable omega three. We’re on the Eden campus of the University of St Andrews, so all the power to the building will come from their solar farm, and if there’s not enough power from that we’ll flip to a renewable tariff on the grid. We’ve also put in place C02 capture from our fermenters for future capture of C02 further down the line.”

Eden Mill distillery was established in 2012 and was the first to make spirits in the region in over 150 years. Between now and then, there has been a huge whisky - and gin - boom, which is now tapering off with declining sales.

Just last month Highland distillery Glenglassaugh made some production staff redundant. So how is Eden Mill planning on managing this change in whisky demand?

Mr Donaldson said the focus on location, and their tie-in with arguably the world’s most famous golf course, would be key.

“Whisky is a big part of the business, but so is gin,” he said. “So when we open the new distillery, we’ll also make a change to our Golf gin, which will mean we will include botanicals hand foraged by our head distiller from the Old Course.

“This gives us a connection to the local area and one of the most famous courses in the world.”

As for whisky, Mr Donaldson added: “We see our whisky as having a really unique proposition in the sense that we’re from the home of golf, so that gives us a massive activation platform in what is a hugely growing sport, particularly in the last four or five years. So we believe that gives us a point of difference that we can leverage with consumers from all over the world.”

One of the areas within the distillery will be the cask storage site, which is set to house the first 300 casks sold to customers. There is still about 80 left for anyone keen to own a slice of this historic town’s history as Euan Kinninmonth, the Eden Mill brand homes manager, explained.

“Eden Mill St Andrews represents a unique opportunity for individuals and groups of individuals from all over the world to own something very unique from St Andrews, be part of Scotch whisky history and have their own bottling from St Andrews,” he said. “We’ve sold around 550 casks this year and we still have around 80 casks left to sell and there will be a further release in 2026. The distillery itself will house our first 300 casks and people who own a cask that’s held in the distillery will have the unique opportunity to come to the distillery and visit their cask and sample from it.”

While the site is still weeks away from bottling whisky, with production due to start in March, the newly installed stills give an idea of what the final liquid will taste like. The two hand-crafted copper stills were manufactured by LHS in Speyside and designed in collaboration with Eden Mill head distiller Scott Ferguson to achieve a light, floral and grassy new make similar to that which he distilled back in 2014 on the original stills.

Mr Kinninmonth said of the flavour profile: “By region we are a lowland distillery, but our spirit, given the shape of the stills, will be a combination of lowland and Highland style.

“The still shape will give us a robust spirit, but will still maintain the core flavour profile from our 100 per cent Fife malted barley. It’s an onion shaped spirit still with a boil ball, which creates a bit of reflux so you increase the copper contact with the spirit, which gives the robust spirit that will hold up really well to sherry cask maturation. This will form a core part of our maturation programme.

“We’ve always been quite an innovative, experimental distillery and we focus on the quality of wood. Primarily we will use first fill bourbon and first fill sherry casks. But we will also experiment with a lot of other, different wood maturations and that’s the exciting part for the distillers.”