InchDairnie Distillery

InchDairnie Distillery is a Fife distillery built to take malt whisky tradition into modern production methods, and it is the source of RyeLaw Fife Single Grain Scotch Whisky, an expression carried in The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library.

History & Heritage

InchDairnie was founded by Ian Palmer, a whisky-industry veteran with decades of experience, and construction was completed on a site between the towns of Glenrothes and Kinglassie in Fife, Scotland, beneath the Lomond Hills. First spirit ran from the stills on 21 December 2015, making it one of the newer Lowland-region distilleries. From the outset the distillery was designed less as a heritage recreation and more as an engineered plant, with equipment chosen to let the team control flavour precisely rather than reproduce a single traditional style.

In May 2025, InchDairnie Distillery merged with MacDuff International, the company behind blends including Islay Mist and Lauder's, to form InchDairnie Whisky Limited. As of July 2026 Ian Palmer serves as Chairman of that combined business, with the day-to-day company led by two managing directors covering commercial and distilling operations. The MacDuff name was retired from active use in the merger, while the group retained offices in both Glasgow and Glenrothes.

The Whiskey

InchDairnie operates its own stills and mills its own grain, and its output spans several categories. Alongside single malt (released under the KinGlassie name), the distillery makes a distinctive Scottish rye.

RyeLaw Fife Single Grain Scotch Whisky is that rye. Its mash bill is 53% malted rye and 47% malted barley, both cereals sourced from farms in the Kingdom of Fife, including Ryelaw Farm, from which the whisky takes its name. Under Scotch whisky law, a spirit combining more than one cereal in this way is classified as single grain rather than single malt, even though in other countries the recipe would read as a rye whisky. RyeLaw is distilled in a Lomond Hill still, a copper pot still fitted with adjustable bubble-cap plates in its neck, a technique the distillery calls precision distilling because it lets them collect spirit at an exact target strength. The inaugural release was distilled in 2017, matured for around five years in charred virgin American oak, and bottled in 2022 at 46.3% ABV, non chill-filtered and of natural colour. It was a limited run, the outcome of a single week's production yielding roughly 200 casks released worldwide.

Why It Matters

RyeLaw sits at the edge of what Scotch whisky rules allow, using a majority-rye mash bill and unusual still design to make a spirit that reads like an American rye but is legally Scotch. For a whiskey library organized around the world's producing regions, InchDairnie is a useful marker of how new Scottish distilleries are widening the category rather than repeating it. The Sentinel Room carries RyeLaw Fife Single Grain Scotch Whisky, giving guests a direct point of comparison between a Scottish rye and the American ryes on the same shelves.