On Wednesday 25th August we hosted a Whisky Degustation Evening at Cambo House to launch our Round 2 share release. The night began with welcome drinks at 6pm outside Cambo House itself where Sir Peter Erskine talked a little about the history of the house to our guests.

Then at around 6.40pm the St Andrews Caledonian Pipe Band from Tasmania arrived fresh from a gig at Edinburgh Castle.  Their bus parked halfway up the main drive to Cambo House and they proceeded to march their way down the drive piping a melody of tunes including Waltzing Matilda whilst Sir Peter’s cows did their best to put them off by stampeding across their paths.

The Pipe Band continued their performance on the lawn in front of Cambo House, followed by a tenor and penny whistler who, most memorably for me, performed “Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Two members of the Pipe Band then piped us into Cambo House and upstairs to the drawing room where the rest of the evening’s proceedings took place. The menu / order of ceremonies was then handed out to everyone:

I started by welcoming everyone, thanking the Tasmanian St Andrews Caledonian Pipe Band for their wonderful performance, and thanking Sir Peter and Lady Erskine for welcoming us into their home and supporting the creation of a distillery on their estate. Thereafter I introduced Douglas Davidson (current Deputy Chairman and former Managing Director of the Isle of Arran Distillery) to introduce the first whisky of the evening, the Arran 10 Year Old (46%).     Colour: Pale Straw Cask: Mixture of ex-bourbon hogsheads and European oak sherry butts.    Nose: Aromatic and creamy with citrus, tart apples and vanilla ice cream. Taste: Soft and smooth, creamy toffees, balanced oak, lemon burst, sultanas and nutmeg. Finish: Medium finish, with lemons hints of oak and spiced fruit.

Next I presented a video sequence on our sand sculpting event at the British Open in St Andrews. The next speaker of the evening was Stephen Marshall, global brand ambassador of Dewar’s, who talked about our second whisky of the evening, the Craigellachie 14 year old (40%) from Speyside: Nose: Fragrant, flowery, thick, creamy, warm pastries, madeira, apple wood, hints of smoke. Taste: Medium bodied, sweet, smoky, creamy, citrus, hazelnuts, almonds, malt, cocoa, orchard fruit, liquorice and a hint of spice.    Finish: Long, clean, warm with freshly cut herbs, malty with lightly smoked afterglow.

Next up was our architect James Simpson OBE who was as colourful and well spoken as ever.  Before introducing Bill Lark we played a video from abc news in Australia about the Tasmanian Whisky Industry. Bill then talked about his Lark cask strength.

Next up was Founding Director, Greg Ramsay who talked a little about the Round 2 Offer Document. Stephen Marshall then introduced his Aberfeldy 21 year old (40%):      Nose: Sweet, honey, fruity, fresh, zesty, vanilla and lightly charred notes    Taste: Full bodied, sweet, smooth,  chocolate oranges    Finish: Long and spicey

Afterwards John, the tenor, sang some more.

To introduce the final whisky of the evening, Laphroaig 18 year old (48%), whisky writer (the ‘Carl Linnaeus’ of whisky) Dr David Wishart presented us with some excellent tasting notes and information on the Laphroaig Distillery itself:     Colour: Bright Gold.     Cask: Ex-Bourbon hogsheads.    Nose: Tarred rope, sweet smoke, creamy toffee, maple syrup and new mown hay.      Taste: Full bodied, zesty oak and rich peat smoke, with treacle toffees, toasted almonds, aniseed and ginger.    Finish: Long peaty finish, with treacle toffees and creamy vanilla lingering at the end

Next up was Sir Peter Erskine who played some excellent blues music. His first song was by Al Hughes from Glenrothes “Where the White Men Sing the Blues” and the second was “Stately Home Blues” by Bernie Precious from Crail.

Following Sir Peter was local folk hero King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) who performed:

Cod liver oil and the orance juice

Diamentina drover

La-di-dum

Jump the Cats

And the racket they made

We ended with the small pipes and a small speech from the Pipe Band leader and myself.

For all of you who attended and supported the night thank you so much and I hope there will be many more like it in the future in our new distillery! We had 2 cameras videoing the whole event so look forward to sharing the event with you all once it is edited!

The final day got off to a good start with a wonderful write up by Alan Bastable, Senior Editor, Golf Magazine here .

Arriving at 8am Peter and I were relieved to see that the bridge was still standing although footprints over the top indicated that someone had run over it in the night. The same person also had changed or kingsbarnsdistillery.com to kingsbarnsdistillery.cum as the footprints were the same!

The first job of the day was completing the block of sand that the R&A Clubhouse was going to created from. We also changed “Rory 62 RIP” to “Louis ?” as we were not sure how to spell his name or whether he was going to win. Leaving Peter to work with the detailed sculpting of the R&A Clubhouse I got to work on the last sculpture of the week to be made, our future Kingsbarns Whisky Still. As usual this involved building up a block of sand which was hard work but likely Colm and Jack arrived to make life a bit easier and before I knew it we were ready.

I then joined Heather on creating “Open Champ Louis” and hey presto our work was done. What a sense of satisfaction it was seeing them all laid out in front of us, I just wish I could have taken them all home! Biggest thanks of all most go to Peter and Sally Bignell who flew all the way from Tasmania to help us create our array of golf and whisky sculptures. Thanks also to my co-director Ian Mckie, illustrator & designer Heather Brennan, Dawn, James, Steve, Mark Connelly, Helen Wyllie, Stephen Marshall for providing the staves and hoops, Tam & Matt the car park police, Colm & Jack and everyone else who helped. A big thank you must also go to the BBC and ESPN for showing our work all week as well as to all the journalists photographers and public who took the time to come down and support us.

Here are a list organisations who have features on us so far: BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC 2 Live Golf and Highlights, ESPN, Wave 102, The Guardian , Golf Magazine, Adidas, The Scotsman  ,The Courier  and Bunkered Magazine

All the pictures can now be found in the Gallery sections of the site.

To end with I thought I would quote from the Scotsman Newspaper

“The award for best guerrilla marketing campaign of Open week has to go to www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com, which has received daily television coverage thanks to its golf-related sand sculptures”

Today our sculpting team consisted of Peter, Heather and myself for the whole day and Dawn & James in the morning with Ian covering the evening shift with additional help from various kind helpers throughout the day.

In terms of press we had ESPN, Golf Punk, Sports Illustrated, The Courier, Golf World, Real Radio to add to BBC Five Live Radio, BBC Scotland Radio, BBC TV, Glasgow Herald we had on Friday. Andrew Coltart and Padraig Harrington were also kind enough to come down to the beach for a few snaps next to our sculptures. Will post the snaps another time……

Today we created Tiger Woods and the Swilken Bridge & Burn and prepared a block for the R&A Clubhouse tomorrow. Once complete we hope to move onto a Whisky Still!

Feel free to come down any time tomorrow to see our sand sculptures and have a chat…….

Our event was featured in both The Courier newspaper and on Adidas’s website here

Below is Steve from Adidas’s accompanying story to go with the video:

“While walking next to the West Sands Beach in St. Andrews, I saw some impressive sand sculptures. I went down to the beach to see these sculptures first hand and met Doug Clement, Founding Director of the Kingsbarns Distillery. He hired an award-winning sculptor to promote his venture and create buzz around the Open Championship.

The venture is trying to get investors on board so they can open a whiskey distillery at Kingsbarns Golf Club, where we played a couple days ago. The cool part is that these gentlemen are caddies at Kingsbarns. After countless golfers asking where the closest distillery was and pointing them about an hour away, they decided to start a venture and bring a distillery straight to Kingsbarns.

There are a lot of jokes going around town because the man who Doug hired to help make the whiskey is from Australia. So a Scottish man is asking an Australian man how to make whiskey!

After the message from Harry that it was time to step up our game, I asked if they could create the adidas logo. After telling them about the Wear in the World adventure I was on, they were happy to help me out. I hope you enjoy the video above on how award-winning sculptor, Peter Bignell, created the adidas logo. Harry, this sculpture is dedicated to you!

Steve

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Below are some Day 2 pictures: