The whisky world is, at present, attempting to unpick the industrial revolution. When Aeneas Coffey patented his continuous still in 1831, he made the production of blended whisky on an almost limitless scale possible. In so doing, he inadvertently paved the way for a branded revolution and 150 years of profitable exploitation by a shrinking oligarchy of ever-larger players. Their blends and brands continue to dominate global sales. Intellectually and culturally, the result is boredom. Those brands no longer answer the needs of the very top echelon of consumers – hence the journey back towards the authenticity, individuality and character of malt whisky.

But why simply stop with malts, most of which are owned by the big companies anyway? You could, for example, go further back towards Scotch whisky’s origins, with a return to the farm distillery. That is what’s under way now at Kilchoman on Islay and Daftmill in Fife. The small scale of farm whisky production means that there is no need to find industry customers among the whisky blenders, which conventional malt distilleries need. Greater creativity is possible, too, as both malt “recipes” and distilling methods can be tweaked from week to week, and batch to batch.

Another way of returning to source, though, is about to unfold near a small village in Fife called Ladybank (not to be confused with the defunct Lowland malt distillery of Ladyburn, sited within the grain distillery of Girvan). James Thomson is the man behind it. His previous career in marketing whisky showed him that “what consumers like is to get close to the producer. You can’t do that when staff are working for large companies. So I asked myself how I could fill that disconnect.”  His solution? “Let’s build a distillery for members only.”

In a way, this completes another historical circle: Ladybank will be made, at a small, artisanal scale, by its own consumers. Or near enough.

There will, says Thomson, be a maximum of 1,250 members. He anticipates that distillation will begin at the end of 2007. The first tranche of 300 memberships, priced at £1,850 for UK residents, was sold by 2003; a second tranche of 250 is part-sold at present, though the price has now risen to £3,250 for UK residents. Overseas members are welcome and pay a lower membership charge (€3,950 or $4,750), on the basis that they are likely to use the distillery facilities less. There is no annual fee for members thus far, though Thomson hasn’t ruled out instituting one for those who join later.

Who has signed up so far? “It’s not the whisky nerds,” says Thomson. “It tends to be people who either have a connection with Scotland, from the past or present, or those who love the idea of co-creation.” The first tranche of membership attracted applications from 30 countries.  Ladybank itself is sited within easy reach of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Gleneagles and St Andrews: one senses that golf may have been as important as clean water and fresh air in the choice of site.

Membership brings an allocation of 300 bottles of whisky over 50 years (six per year), as well as the chance to visit the distillery and use its facilities whenever members wish. There will, however, be no overnight accommodation and no restaurant to start with, just a bar and a kitchen and dining room in which members can grill the odd venison sausage. The core appeal of membership is involvement.

Thomson and his team have high ambitions for the whisky itself, and the technical aspects are being handled by industry expert Harry Rifkin. The plan is to produce at least three types of spirit: an unpeated style of purity and finesse; a peaty whisky; and an aromatic malt whose drying barley may well be bathed in hickory smoke or the smoke of other aromatic woods such as rowan or alder. An adjustable lyne arm will make changes to the spirit character eminently possible.

There will also be a lot of cask experiments; every Ladybank batch will be a small one (maximum production will be just 35,000 litres of alcohol a year, which is 100th of the annual production, for example, of Caol Ila). Members will have “distilling days” when they can come and get involved and Thomson also has plans to run a whisky school at Ladybank.

Trust, of course, is needed to sign up for projects of this sort. As a way of purchasing a whisky that, as yet, exists only in the imagination, the scheme looks expensive. The lure, of course, is that eventually you may be able to pour a glass of malt for your friends and say “I helped make this.”

Ladybank Company of Distillers Club, 21-23 Hill St, Edinburgh EH2 3JP

tel: +44 0845-450 1885

membership@whisky.co.uk www.whisky.co.uk

Philippa Davenport is away