New Scotland Spirits is the culmination of a childhood ambition: distilling spirits from grains grown in the very fields on which New Scots gather to watch Memorial Day fireworks.
Though founded in 2016, our story begins three decades earlier, in a Kindergarten classroom composed of the same faces who stare out from the pages of the senior year yearbook.
To our far-flung friends:
This is our way of giving you a piece of home to take with you… to sip, to remember, to enjoy.
Our Mission
New Scotland Spirits is committed to crafting locally-sourced spirits in honor of our native New Scotland, NY. Utilizing the finest grains grown on Upstate New York’s family farms, we work in tandem with partner distilleries, friends, and local farmers to bring the taste of rural New York to the world beyond our borders. Infused with a sense of place and the “terroir” of times gone by, we present an American spirit with a “New Scottish” soul.
“Nostalgia in a bottle, a good time in a glass.”
The MODERN History of New Scotland
Having been settled by Europeans around 1660, the Town of New Scotland was officially founded in 1832 from the western portion of neighboring Bethlehem in Albany County. At just under 60 square miles and boasting a close-knit community of just under 10,000 New Scots, the Town incorporates several smaller municipalities (chief among them the Village of Voorheesville, but also including the hamlets of Clarksville, Feura Bush, New Salem, Tarrytown, Unionville, Feura Bush, Meads Corner, and Wolf Hill).
The Town of New Scotland:
The Jewel of Albany County
New Scotland derives its name from the large population of Scottish settlers who settled in the area in the quarter-century immediately preceding the American Revolution. One of the primary drivers of that Scottish emigration was the sudden failure of the London banking house of Neale, James, Fordyce and Downe—a socioeconomic catastrophe known as “Black Monday” (June 12, 1772)—which brought financial disaster to thousands of Scottish citizens.
(LEARN MORE! Become a member of the New Scotland Historical Association!)
Today, residents of New Scotland proudly declare themselves to be “New Scots”. They claim a distinct “New Scottish identity” that pays homage to rural values, honors agrarian lifestyles, and celebrates the small-town community ethos that exemplifies the best of America’s promise.
“Helderberg Whiskey” is just another reason for friends to come together and embrace that sense of belonging, in celebration of the people and places which make us who we are.
