Leven is a unique distillery, serving as Diageo’s experimental facility within its Leven bottling plant. It is designed to create any type of spirit Diageo requires.
The distillery is equipped with two mills (a 4-roll and a hammer mill) to process both malt and grain, although it currently lacks a continuous still for grain distillation. It features a versatile mash tun that can shift between a semi-lauter and mash conversion vessel, an oversized heat exchanger to ensure smooth flow of grain mash solids and prevent blockages, and stills with interchangeable middle sections that can replicate any of the company’s 28 other stills. Leven is not only the only distillery in Scotland located within a bottling facility, but it is also one of the few licensed distilleries without a spirit safe, having been granted special dispensation as an experimental site.
The primary goal of Leven is to future-proof Diageo’s Scotch whisky operations by discovering new flavours and refining processes to boost efficiency. The distilling team works closely with Diageo’s blenders to experiment with various elements, including milling settings, barley varieties, yeast strains, heavily roasted malts, and cut points. By conducting experiments at Leven, Diageo avoids disrupting normal production at its other distilleries, though some trials are scaled up at selected sites.
Diageo’s bottling plant in Leven, Fife, opened in 1973 to handle various Scotch whisky lines, and later expanded to include non-whisky products like Smirnoff vodka and Gordon’s gin from the nearby Cameronbridge distillery. The plant saw a significant £13 million expansion in 2001 to accommodate the rise in ready-to-drink products like Smirnoff Ice, followed by an £86 million expansion in 2012, boosting production capacity to 30 million cases annually.
In 2005, Diageo introduced the Process Liquid Development Area (PLDA) within the plant, initially focused on new product development. By 2008, two stills were added, named Isabel and Grace after the daughter of PLDA manager Richard Cowley, and by 2012, two mills, a mash tun, and four washbacks were installed. Leven officially became a fully operational distillery in 2013, making it the 29th distillery in Diageo’s portfolio.
Today, Leven’s focus is on experimenting with Scotch whisky processes and flavour innovation, although it also distills sake for Diageo’s Jinzu brand, the only product regularly produced at the distillery.
