Kingsbarns enters its second decade with a clearer idea of what it wants to be
The Fife distillery’s new Cambo Collection begins with a 10-year-old STR-matured whisky, giving Kingsbarns a new framework to explore house style, place and how its spirit develops with age
Kingsbarns began distilling in Fife in 2015, and with more mature stock now coming through its warehouses, the choices available to the distillery are starting to change.
Its latest release, The Cambo Collection: First Edition, is a 10-year-old single malt matured entirely in STR casks, but it also marks the beginning of an annual series designed to give Kingsbarns more room to define what its whisky should taste like as the distillery grows older.
“We are a small distillery in the grand scheme of things, so it’s critical that we continue to establish the Kingsbarns style – that fruity, floral and elegant character – across our releases,” distillery manager Peter Holroyd told Barley.
Kingsbarns’ distillery manager Peter Holroyd
The series will become an annual release, with each edition drawing on a different aspect of the Cambo Estate, the agricultural landscape surrounding the distillery and Kingsbarns’ relationship with the place it calls home.
The first edition takes autumn as its starting point and Holroyd said the idea grew from his interest in seasonal food and the anticipation around ingredients that only appear at particular times of year.
“I’ve always loved the seasonality of food and looking forward to what is available at a particular time of year, so why not apply that thinking to whisky?” he said.
“With the first release in the Cambo Collection, we wanted to capture that feeling of autumn at Cambo – the richness and warmth of the season, with flavours that brought to mind bramble jam, baked apples and apple crumble.”
That could easily have become little more than seasonal packaging, but Kingsbarns says the flavour brief came first.
The whisky has been matured in STR casks, which are shaved, toasted and re-charred before use, a treatment designed to expose fresh wood and bring more flavour from the cask.
“The STR casks were a really important part of achieving that profile,” Holroyd said. “We knew we wanted the casks to complement the spirit rather than overpower it.”
That distinction is becoming increasingly central to how Kingsbarns talks about its whisky. While plenty of modern releases are marketed around increasingly elaborate cask finishes, Holroyd says Kingsbarns is trying to avoid allowing maturation to obscure the character of the spirit underneath.
“We don’t want the influence of the cask, for example, to overtake the spirit, so our Production Director Isabella Wemyss is very selective when it comes to cask supply and making sure the wood complements what we produce.”
An autumnal dram - baked apple and plum
The First Edition is bottled at 46% ABV, non-chill filtered and limited to 640 cases across the UK and EU, with a price starting at £65.
Its official tasting notes lean heavily into the seasonal idea, with baked apple, cinnamon, bramble jam and blackcurrant on the nose, followed by cinnamon rolls, vanilla icing, plum and baking spice.
Kingsbarns released a 10-year-old whisky last year, so this is not its first whisky to reach double figures, although Holroyd says it is the oldest whisky matured entirely in STR casks that the distillery has released.
“I can’t quite believe we are already into our second decade of production, and it’s very exciting to see the spirit evolve as the years go by,” he said.
“That added age brings greater layers of complexity to the whisky, while still retaining the elegant, fruity character that we look for in Kingsbarns.”
The Cambo name also gives the distillery a way of tying its future releases more closely to the site around it.
Kingsbarns sits within the historic Cambo Estate, surrounded by Fife farmland, with a restored doocot dating from 1800 at the heart of the distillery. The packaging for the new release takes inspiration from the old farm buildings, including an aperture based on the arches of the doocot.
There is always a danger with whisky and “sense of place” that the language can run ahead of the liquid, particularly when the connection is more conceptual than agricultural. Kingsbarns is not claiming that each Cambo release will be a radically different terroir experiment, and Holroyd is fairly clear that continuity remains the priority.
Instead, the collection seems intended to give the distillery room to move around the edges of its established style.
“Different cask types, maturation approaches and elements of the estate can all give us different ways to tell the story of Cambo through whisky,” he said.
“We already have some surprises maturing in the warehouse, so keep your eyes peeled over the next few years.”
That may prove to be the more interesting part of the series.
For much of its first decade, Kingsbarns was inevitably judged as a young distillery producing young whisky. It now has enough age, stock and experience behind it to start being judged on something harder to establish: whether drinkers can recognise Kingsbarns without being told what is in the glass. The Cambo Collection looks like the beginning of that next stage.
The Cambo Collection: First Edition will be released on 8 October 2026 through specialist retailers in the UK and EU and directly from Kingsbarns Distillery, priced from £65.
