It’s about as grey as it gets in Speyside as we turn off the road between Elgin and Rothes, right in the heart of whisky country. Just before Burns Night, residual piles of snow from recent falls linger on the roadside. It might have warmed up enough for drizzle over flurries, but the January chill still cuts through.
The drive down to the old Coleburn Distillery gives plenty of clues as to what’s to come. Verges are neatly manicured, and the gently curving bends are reminiscent of a high-end golf course. Chic, petite signage signals ‘The Whisky Resort’ to let you know you’re in the right place. This isn’t what’s typically found on the approach to a whisky distillery that’s been mothballed since 1985.
But step inside the old Excise Office and it’s deliciously warm. Dale Winchester and Gwenda Smits await, two-thirds of the directorship trio behind the Coleburn Whisky Resort. Dale, alongside his brother Mark, founded D&M Winchester, the bottler, blender and warehouse operator that bought the Coleburn site back in 2004. Smits is a hospitality and marketing expert. Between them all, they’ve cooked up plans for Coleburn that are so bold they’re almost audacious.
“We want to make it a lively business again,” Smits says. It’s not like Coleburn has sat idle since D&M acquired it over two decades ago. While the stills have long-since departed, the warehouses and other buildings have been put to good use maturing its own and third-party stocks. A thriving business that, in many ways, is funding the next stage of the development.
And the idea has been years in the making. It all started back when Winchester was a touring musician, providing entertainment at corporate hospitality and events in Speyside and beyond. There were few venue options, and top-quality accommodation options were even sparser. The team then realised there wasn’t just demand for fancy hospitality. If you lived in Craigellachie and wanted a luxury spa day, for a long time you’d have to travel all the way to Aberdeen or Inverness.
From there, the concept snowballed with a series of what ifs. What if they brought the distillery back to life? What if they had five-star accommodation on-site? What if the whisky resort also offered fine dining? Spa facilities? It could well be a first-of-its-kind in the world.
“The thing grows arms and grows legs,” Winchester says, with something close to a smile. “It’s all the things you would do in a resort. And right at the very core of the whole thing is whisky.”
Zoom into the specifics and what Coleburn is set to become sounds a little like a whisky-themed Center Parcs. There are luxury log cabins en route from Canada which will house around 60 guests. The dense woodland surrounding the distillery will be home to winding trails and event spaces. There’s the spa. And, for those truly looking for the five-star life, there will be a pagoda penthouse conversion. That’s primed for the first stage of development, which, along with a restaurant, is set to open later this year. Tour the site to see how it will all fit together and the scale is remarkable.
To achieve the goal, D&M has partnered with Organic Architects. “They get it exactly,” Smits says. It’s an exciting choice. Organic Architects has worked with the likes of Benbecula, Lindores Abbey and Ardnamurchan – but this is something on a totally different level. While neither Winchester or Smits will be drawn on the total level of investment that will go into developing Coleburn, they are realistic that it will have to go live in phases. It will take years to be fully up and running.
The reason? A staunch desire to remain independent. “We want to work with people, but at the end of the day there needs to be the governance to deliver the vision that we've got,” Winchester says. They have received small investments and grants (the local government funded the biomass boiler that will service the restaurant, for example). But the trade off, for the profits from one stage to flow into funding the next, is a precious one.
So what about the whisky? Legendary distiller Keith Cruickshank has been recruited to head up operations, from conversion all the way through to distillation. After 26 years at Benromach, his expertise will shape every element of whisky creation. His aim, he says, is to create a traditional spirit at Coleburn, something that feels in-keeping with Speyside. At the time of his appointment, he said it was a “great honour” to join the team. It might still be a couple of years until the Coleburn stills are fired up, but he’s already busy devising how it will all come together.
But whisky lovers don’t have to wait until then to taste the essence of Coleburn. Part of the strategy in the run-up to the opening is to release independently sourced whiskies, starting with the Local Heros trilogy of blended malts. Sweet Peat, Big Smoke and Sherry Bomb all have Cruickshank’s fingerprints on them, and form not just an introduction to Coleburn, but a celebration of the local heroes in the whisky community (a trademark issue led to the creative spelling).
Community is at the wider heart of the Coleburn plan, too. As well as job creation – essential in Speyside to keep young, ambitious folk in the area – there will be investment in public transport, too. Most realistically this will be in the form of buses. But Smits has a bigger ambition. “Our dream is, there’s a railway line just behind, to reinstate it again and it connects all the different distilleries. Then you can just hop on the train!”
It sounds like a pipe dream. But then who would think to revive a distillery and turn it into a fully-fledged whisky resort? “Everything whisky that you can think of, it will happen here,” Smits says with a grin. A massage and hot tub followed by a whisky tasting and fancy dinner, before a night in a luxurious log cabin surrounded by peaceful forests? I’m in.
