The Story

In 15th century Leith, the monks of the order of St Anthony controlled the movement of wine through the port. The barrels would be taken from ships and stored in the Vaults, by the Kirkgate in central Leith. They employed a cooper called Henry Douglas to keep the casks in good working order. 

When wine began to go missing, suspicion fell on Douglas, who denied all knowledge. A local hermit decided to investigate and accuse the crafty cooper. Henry Douglas looked scandalised. ‘Me?’ he said, ‘I don’t know a thing about it. I swear I know nothing. And if I’m telling a lie, may I never head this cask!’. 

The words had hardly left his mouth, when the cask he was working on fell apart into staves at his feet and he ran into the furthest parts of the great vaults, never to be seen again although the sound of him can sometimes be heard trying to finish his cursed cask. 

Our whisky endures a similar fate. We fill our blending vat with mature Scotch whisky, sourced from across the country, before bottling at least half. The vat is then replenished, before once again being half emptied, the cycle repeating forever. It is an infinite vat of Scotch, delivering intriguing, complex and exquisite whisky in perpetuity.

Leith Export Co. is a nod to the wine & spirit merchants back in the 18 and 19th centuries who sourced their own products directly from producers across Europe and brought them into Leith under their own proprietary brand.  

Based in Edinburgh’s historic Port of Leith, a place that was at one time Scotland’s trading gateway to the world.

We select a range of the finest quality wines & spirits, sourced directly from the very vineyards and cellar doors of our production partners.

The Leith Export Co.

The label & bottle design

The label pays homage to the story of Henry Douglas. With every new batch that we release another part of the story unfolds and will continue to evolve in perpetuity.

The bottle takes inspiration from the remarkable industrial heritage of Leith where in the 18th and 19th centuries, whisky merchants gradually began to dominate the shore as Leith became Scotland’s national hub for the maturation and export of the country’s national spirit.

When wine The first record of glass production in Leith emerged from the mid to late 17th century. It was a remarkable local industrial heritage that inspired us to choose a wine bottle shape for our whisky.