The words ‘passion’ and ‘enthusiasm’ are thrown around a lot in the origin stories of whisky makers, but it would be hard to find two people more passionate and enthusiastic about the craft than Ian Stirling and Paddy Fletcher, founders of the newly opened Port of Leith Distillery. The lifelong friends grew up in Edinburgh and moved to London in their 20s, Fletcher to pursue a career in finance and Stirling entering the wine trade. But they had brought one clear vestige of their Scotch upbringing with them. “All the while we were getting more and more into whisky,” Stirling says, “buying a bottle for the house and drinking it together, then going to tastings, and then eventually experimenting with whisky production in our back garden.” (Their neighbour guessed they were brewing beer, an explanation to which they readily confessed to avoid further questioning.)
In 2014, powered by their whisky-making ambitions, the duo founded Leith-based drinks producer and importer Muckle Brig. Under this banner are the Port of Leith Distillery; the Leith Export Co., which imports and bottles a range of wines including sherry, port, and Champagne; and the Lind & Lime Gin Distillery, the project they never meant to start but which has become a rip-roaring success (Lind & Lime moved into a dedicated premises in 2022 that combines distillery and gin school). “For the longest time we were like, ‘There’s so many gins, we won’t go near that – we’ll just be focused on whisky,’” Stirling recalls. “It’s
