Our Origin
It Started as Drunk Talk
The origins of Nine Rivers Distillery are a nationwide network of Whisky Networking events (read the full story here). What most people might call “drunk talk” — the kind of whisky-fuelled conversation where absolutely everyone is an expert on everything.
But unlike most drunk talk, it was something that niggled away just long enough for some of us to take it seriously.
In context, this was only a few years after the gin renaissance took the Western world by storm. Every man and his dog was creating a gin brand — most of them just contract-distilled labels, but hundreds of genuine startups were popping up, each convinced their gin was better than everyone else’s.
Gin can be a genuinely challenging spirit to craft. Sure, anyone can macerate a fistful of botanicals in neutral spirit and run it through a still. That doesn’t always make it drinkable.
Whisky, on the other hand — malted barley, yeast, water. Just three ingredients. Surely it should be easier?
That was the whisky-fuelled logic.
Our Philosophy
What We Stand For
Whisky is for everyone..
Not just collectors. Not just investors. Not just people with leather-bound tasting notebooks and opinions about "the influence of the Atlantic breeze." The industry has spent decades convincing you that good whisky has to be expensive, exclusive, and accompanied by a lecture. We think that's bollocks.
Honest whisky doesn't need a story. It just needs to be good..
We don't sell fairy tales. We don't sell limited-edition, hand-numbered, single-cask, one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-repeated nonsense. We sell whisky that tastes like whisky should taste. No bullshit. No marketing fluff. No "discovered" family recipes.
The spreadsheet is not the spirit..
Somewhere along the way, the big distilleries forgot that whisky is made by people, not quarterly reports. They run their businesses from Excel and bottom lines. We run ours from a distillery in Fujian, with hands that actually touch the mash, the wash, and the spirit.
We don't need to be ancient to know what good whisky tastes like..
The dinosaurs of the industry have had their turn. They've protected their turf, rigged the rules, and made sure that anyone who isn't part of the club stays outside. We built our own door.
Mistakes are part of the process..
We will make some bad whisky. That's normal. But we won't get a team of marketing fluffies to wrap it in pretty words and pretend it was meant to taste like that — and charge you double. We won't even turn it into a "heather honey and herbs" liqueur. We'll use it to clean the floors, because we're not big fans of waste. But we'll learn from it, and try again. That's what honest distilling looks like.
Our Craft
Same Three Ingredients. No Shortcuts.
Malted barley. Yeast. Water. That’s the whole recipe, and it’s the same recipe every distillery in the world starts with. The difference isn’t the ingredients — it’s what you’re willing to skip when nobody’s watching.
Our water rises through granite that’s been filtering it for thousands of years before it ever reaches our mash tun. Our copper pot stills were built by Forsyths in Scotland, the same coppersmiths trusted by distilleries with three centuries’ head start on us. We didn’t cut corners there, and we don’t cut them anywhere else either.
No colouring. No shortcuts on maturation. No “finishing” a young whisky in three different casks to hide the fact that it’s young. If it isn’t ready, it waits. If it isn’t good enough, it doesn’t get bottled.
Our Founders
Built by More Than 300 Whisky Lovers
Our Milestones
From Drunk Talk to Distillery
A WeChat Group Becomes a Table
A handful of whisky enthusiasts in Shenzhen meet in person for the first time. Real bottles, real conversation. Whisky Networking China is born.
Enough Talk, Time to Build
The recurring question — "could we actually make whisky in China?" — stops being a joke. We start looking for a home.
Dachi Town, Longyan
We sign for our home in the mountains of Fujian — granite-filtered water, ancient woodlands, and room to grow for decades.
And Now
The next chapter is being written — by the people drinking it. Buy a cask ›