Patience is the keynote. In the early 1960s George Christie acquired a weathered barley mill beside the River Tromie and asked master stonemason Alex Fairlie to coax a small distillery out of its bones, one course of granite at a time. Work concluded in 1987 and, on 12 December 1990, the stills sang at last, a late flowering that suited the place’s measured temperament. In 2012 the custodianship passed to Harvey’s of Edinburgh, an arrangement that secured the distillery’s future through a period of quiet growth. In 2025 the story turned a page as production moved away from Tromie Mills, rendering the original site a so-called lost distillery in the modern parlance.

The setting sits near Kingussie, with the Cairngorms rising in clean light and roe deer flickering along the edges of the wood. Water is drawn from the Tromie itself, channelled by the old mill lade that once drove the wheel. Size here has always been a conscious choice. The buildings are modest, the warehouses few, the feel more atelier than factory, and visitors note the intimacy long before anyone talks in litres.

Production favoured unhurried methods. Long fermentations, deliberate cuts, and a compact pair of copper pots shaped a spirit that tended toward clarity and fruit. With capacity on the smaller side for Scotland, about the low hundreds of thousands of litres annually, the team focused on polish rather than volume, letting cask selection do its steady work in the cool Highland air. Even with the site now fallen silent, its character remains legible in the remaining stocks: a gentle, well-made malt from a beautiful nook of the Highlands, distilled with care and a craftsman’s eye for detail.