Mackmyra Distillery

The story of Mackmyra Sweden’s first whisky distillery famously began with a ski trip in 1998 when eight friends from Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology went on holiday together and all brought bottles of whisky to share. In conversation during the evening the friends’ national pride was somewhat piqued by the fact that all of them had brought Scotch and discussion turned to how a Swedish distillery could be set up. One year after the idea was born in 1999 Mackmyra Svensk Whisky was founded. Later that year all the permits were in place and the first drops could be distilled. The distillery is at the beautiful Mackmyra Bruk mill in Gästrikland. When they opened for business in 1999 they were the only whisky distillery in Sweden and also the most northerly one in the world. At that time theirs was a very small-scale business using a copper boiler with a capacity of only 100 litres. It was in this pilot distillery that they developed their recipes. At the same time the friends proved to the outside world that it is possible to create an excellent malt whisky using the ingredients and under the conditions that they have in Sweden.