Isabella Wemyss

Director of Production

I’m the production director for Wemyss Family Spirits and Kingsbarns single malt.  In that role, I’m responsible for choosing the casks that we mature the spirit in, and then blending the whisky when it is ready.

I entered the family business to work in our tea production business, where I had my first organoleptic training as a tea taster and which experience I’ve been able to bring into my role in the spirits business.  I joined my brother to look after the production side shortly after he founded our spirits business, and I found myself as passionate about whisky as I am about tea.  And particularly how we create different flavours through cask choice and blending.

Everyone in the spirits business on the production side is so helpful and friendly – big or small company, I’ve never met anyone who wouldn’t  help if they could.  It’s the sense of community and being part of a shared experience, both at company and industry  level, that particularly appeals to me.  It also happens in the tea industry!

I have particularly enjoyed seeing the evolution of the Kingsbarns single malt spirit as I was involved in designing the spirit and the eventual blends from the moment we started to think about building a distillery.  And we are only at the beginning – we have so many exciting cask types in stock, and spirit maturing for ever older variants of our current releases.  I am always learning something new about how our spirit matures and what type of casks showcases its quality to the best advantage.

We have an older version of our signature blend (currently called Dream to Dram) coming out in early 2023.  I have blended and seen the samples which will go into our first bottling.  This will undoubtedly be my favourite release as it is the oldest release we have done to date and really does showcase our spirit and wood policy to its best advantage.  My favourite serve would be a straight dram, perhaps with a little water added to open up the depths of flavour and complexity.