Founded in 1599 and 2018
On the 7th of July 1599, the Stewart family established
Badvo hill farm outside Pitlochry in Perthshire. Valued
for its plentiful fresh spring water and biodiversity the
farm has stayed in the family to this day. The farm was
previously a site of distilling as spirit was produced in
farm cooperatives in the 1700s as detailed in the
family distilling handbook. The Stewarts were actively
involved in the cooperatives that established the
distilleries local to Pitlochry, and today malting floors,
pagoda/cupola chimnies, and other distillery features
can still be found in the farms that the family
previously ran.
At 18 years old Helen Stewart started working at a
local distillery and fell in love with the Scottish Spirits
industry. She went on to spend three years collecting
funding for the distillery, designing the gin, and
renovating the building, whilst she completed her
degree in English Literature and Language. Upon
discovering her heritage in distilling through the family
distilling handbook she wrote her dissertation in
The Linguistic Legacy Illicit Distillation left in Whisky
and Gin. She came home to open Badvo Distillery
in 2018.
When Badvo was opened it was discovered that Stewart's forebear had also planned a distillery at 18 and opened it at 22, in a true example of history repeating itself.