
from dairy to daiquiri
The story of converting an old cattle byre into a modern rum distillery
OUR WOODLAND DISTILLERY
Ninefold Rum Distillery is nestled between woodlands on Dormont Home Farm at the heart of Dormont Estate, Dumfries & Galloway. A quiet rural setting in southwest Scotland, this is not an obvious location for a rum distillery!
After a year of planning, work began at the start of 2018 to convert two old cattle byres on the home farm that were originally used to milk cattle from at least the 1950’s until the mid-1980’s.
The older of the two buildings, now containing the still house, saw the most work involved. A near-complete teardown and rebuild of this Victorian sandstone building over 8 months created a fully insulated, heated and serviced distillery, with solar PV to provide some electrical energy for the running of the building.
The more ‘modern’ 1950’s and larger byre next to the distillery was simply converted into a warehouse and is now our bond, the resting place for our casks.
A few more months of installing our Scottish hand build copper hybrid pot still and obtaining licences, and we started our first batches in Spring 2019.
We documented the conversion on YouTube - check out the videos if you’d like a deeper dive into the process of repurposing these old buildings into a modern rum distillery.

The old cattle byre before it was converted into the still house
Outside the lovely distillery building, with solar panels
our beautiful modern distillery after the conversion

fancy a distillery tour?
We love showing people around our rural distillery.