The Port of Leith Distillery
Nine storeys and forty metres of distillery, because the plot they could get was too small to lay one out flat.8
Why go
Ian Stirling says it himself: We never set out to build a vertical distillery – the shape and size of the building is a product of the tiny site we were able to secure.
3 What the constraint produced is a gravity-led plant. Milling and mashing sit on the fifth floor and the process spirals down through fermentation to the stills at ground level, where the new make leaves by the service yard and the barley goes back up.8 He and Paddy Fletcher spent GBP 12m on it, started building in November 2020, opened to the public in October 2023, and built for up to a million bottles of single malt a year.
What the house sells now comes from its bottling arm, Leith Bond, because nothing off these stills has been bottled yet. The whisky to taste is Table Whisky, a single grain distilled in Edinburgh, matured in a mix of new oak and sherry casks, blended in Leith, at 43 per cent.4 Alongside it on the back bar sits Perpetuity Blended Scotch, the team's first whisky, released under The Leith Export Co before the tower opened.2 The distillery also makes its own fortified wine, and the Oloroso and Manzanilla turn up in the cocktails upstairs.2
The tour runs 90 minutes, walks the tower, has you fill and label your own miniature of new make, and finishes with a seated tasting in the QC Tasting Laboratory that works through the production and maturation stages.5 The bar is the eighth floor, by lift, and it has a kitchen with a chef in it: Patrick Whittaker came from Scran & Scallie and Hamilton's and put an Arbroath Smokie Scotch egg and a haggis tartiflette on the list.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Table Whisky. Blythe Robertson, reviewing the bar for the trade, called it
a revelation,
which is a strong word for a young house's grain.1 A 700ml bottle is GBP 36.50 downstairs in the shop, and it comes in a 100ml can for GBP 6.50.4 - Order: The Cobbler if you want to taste what the house makes beyond whisky. Their own Oloroso and Manzanilla, orange cordial, black walnut bitters and nutmeg, GBP 8 as priced in 2023.2
- Order: the Clava Brie tartiflette, with peppery haggis hidden under the layers of cheesy potato. Gaby Soutar found it
served in its tin, so there were satisfyingly crispy edges for us to pick at.
GBP 9 in 2023.2 - Order: the tour's miniature, filled off the spirit safe. The shop downstairs does not sell it.
- Avoid: the Monday or Tuesday kitchen. It is shut both days while the bar stays open.5
What locals & experts say
- Blythe Robertson, CLASS (2024), the bar trade's Scotland reviewer, scored it 8 out of 10 and put the case for going up the tower even if you skip the tour:
Cocktails are elegantly rendered, whisky flights are approachable, the Table Whisky is a revelation, and there's a strong sense that the place has been carefully crafted to hit high notes with a broad audience.
1 - Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (2023), reviewed the kitchen and led on the one dish everyone photographs:
we also loved the cricket-ball-sized Arbroath Smokie Scotch egg (£11). It was light and salty, with a soft yolked oeuf in the middle and a topping of teeny nonpareille capers and a chiffonade of chives.
2 - Vaibhav Sood came in as head of whisky in July 2023, from operations manager at The Lakes Distillery, three months before the tower opened its doors.6 He is still the name the trade quotes on the house's releases three years later.4
- Every award this building holds is an architecture award. Threesixty Architecture records a Scottish Design Awards gold for commercial buildings and a Glasgow Institute of Architects win in 2025, plus a RIAS shortlisting.8 No drinks or hospitality body has recognised the venue.
Good to know
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass for the bar, inspected 1 November 2023, which is two years and nine months old at the time of writing. That is well past the eighteen-month bound, so the hygiene register says nothing current about the premises either way.10
- Hours: the bar opens at noon seven days, to 9pm Sunday through Wednesday and to 11pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The kitchen is closed Monday and Tuesday and otherwise stops an hour before the bar.5
- Booking: worth doing for the bar, and some tables are held for walk-ins. Parties of seven or more go through the bar's own email. Tours book online.5
- Price: the distillery tour runs from GBP 25 for 90 minutes on the venue's own booking system, read 4 August 2026.7 The Distiller's Tasting is GBP 25 for four drams in an hour and the Leith Walking Tour GBP 25 with a drink at the end.5 The tour cost GBP 26 at launch in 2023, so the headline price has come down in cash terms.3
- The room: the bar is indoors on the eighth floor behind glass, reached by lift, with the shop on the sixth.2
- Sites: the same owners run two distilleries a short walk apart, this one on Whisky Quay and Lind & Lime gin at 24 Coburg Street. This page is Whisky Quay. There is a third company address at 53 Tower Street, registered in 2018, with no public offer described anywhere.10
- Getting there: Whisky Quay is at the Constitution Street end of the docks, in walking range of the Shore.
Verdict
should-visit — A working single malt distillery inside the city, built nine storeys up because the site was too small to lay flat, with the production sequence running downhill from the fifth floor and a public tour that puts you in front of the spirit safe to fill your own miniature. That format does not exist elsewhere in Edinburgh, and the trade backs the top of the tower: CLASS scored the bar 8 out of 10 and Blythe Robertson called the house Table Whisky a revelation while rating the cocktails and the flights. The Scotsman reviewed the kitchen separately and liked it, so the glass and the plate both carry an independent critical judgment. It sits at the bottom of the rung rather than the top, because the thing you would expect to come for does not exist: nothing off these stills has been bottled, Table Whisky is a bought-and-blended single grain, and no drinks or hospitality body has recognised the venue. The Athletic Arms and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society are on this rung with far deeper back bars; Port of Leith earns the detour on the tour, the room and two positive critical reads, not on depth of stock.