Douglas Clement

Douglas Barclay Clement was born in January 1977 and raised in the East Neuk of Fife, a stretch of coastline where family histories are often inseparable from work. In his own family, on one side were the well-known Clements dairy families; on the other, the Barclay families who fish. These were not whisky people or drinks traders, but farming and fishing families whose livelihoods were tied to the natural resources of the land, sea, and long-established local economies.

Clement did not move directly into either world. Instead, he pursued a business education, earning a degree in business management from Abertay University. After university, he built a working life that mixed travel with seasonal, people-facing roles. He spent periods abroad backpacking, and at home he gravitated toward golf, both as a keen player and as a caddie. Over time, caddying became central to his professional identity. He worked at Kingsbarns Golf Links and also at tour level, including caddying for four-time European Tour winner Mathias Grönberg.

Those years on the fairways quietly shaped his future. Kingsbarns and the wider St Andrews area draw golfers from across the world, many of whom arrive with more than golf in mind. Clement repeatedly heard the same question from visiting players: “Where is the nearest distillery we can visit? The East Neuk lay only a short drive from St Andrews, yet there was no local single malt distillery offering the kind of visitor experience people expected. Clement began to see a simple but powerful mismatch. One of Scotland’s most famous golfing regions had no distillery of its own welcoming tourists in the same way.

By the late 2000s, the idea had hardened into a plan. Clement began to think about creating a distillery that could sit physically and symbolically alongside golf, marrying two of Scotland’s strongest international draws on the same stretch of coast. In May 2009, he formalized that ambition when he became a director of The Kingsbarns Company of Distillers Ltd. From that point, the project existed not as a casual notion, but as a structured commercial venture with a corporate vehicle, planning objectives, and fundraising targets. Clement understood visitor behavior because he had spent years alongside visitors, listening to what they asked for and watching how they moved through Fife. After research, he identified the derelict East New Hall steading on the Cambo Estate as a suitable site. Between 2009 and 2011, he raised early-stage funding by approaching golfing friends and contacts, using that money to pursue planning permission and apply for grants. Progress came, but not easily. The project attracted belief and modest capital, including an initial £100,000 from 32 private investors and a further £670,000 from a government grant. Even so, the total still fell short of what was required to build a distillery and visitor centre from the ground up. Kingsbarns, at that stage, was a credible idea with partial funding rather than a finished development.

The decisive turning point arrived in late 2012. Clement made contact with the Wemyss family, owners of Wemyss Distillery Ltd, with an email whose subject line read simply: “Distillery Opportunity.” The message outlined the same problem Clement had been hearing about for years: golfers asking where to learn about Scotch, and no local distillery to send them to.  The approach resonated, and in 2013, Wemyss Distillery Ltd bought out the project, providing the financial backing and corporate structure needed to move forward.

With ownership and funding settled, construction followed. The derelict steading at East New Hall was restored and converted into a working distillery and visitor centre. Kingsbarns Distillery and Visitor Centre officially opened to the public on Monday, 1 December 2014, following an unveiling event on St Andrew’s Day, Sunday 30 November, attended by friends and family. Clement was named directly as Distillery Founder and took on the role of Visitor Centre Manager as the site began welcoming guests. The first whisky was laid down in March 2015. At that point, Kingsbarns moved from being a visitor concept with stills, to a functioning single malt distillery with spirit in cask and a long maturation journey ahead.

Clement remained closely involved through this formative period. He had spent roughly a decade finding the site, securing it, gaining planning permission, raising funds, overseeing construction, and working at the distillery as Founder, Director, and Visitor Centre Manager. Nevertheless, records show his resignation as a director of Kingsbarns at the end of 2016, aligning with the completion of establishment phase and its transition into steady operation under Wemyss ownership.

His subsequent work continued along familiar lines. In 2024, Clement incorporated Dream to Dram Tours Ltd. The company reflects the same instincts that led to Kingsbarns: guiding visitors, interpreting Scotch whisky, and building experiences around Scotland’s distilling landscape.

Publicly accessible sources offer only limited detail about Clement’s private life, a common pattern in whisky-industry profiles. In professional posts in 2025, he mentioned his “soon to be wife, Kate,” indicating his engagement and forthcoming marriage, though he has otherwise kept family matters largely out of public-facing narratives.

Clement’s significance in modern Scotch whisky does not rest on technical innovation or a catalogue of production experiments. It rests on something more foundational: identifying a gap in the visitor landscape and refusing to accept that it should remain empty. Kingsbarns exists because a local caddie listened carefully to what visitors kept asking for, recognized that no one else was answering them, and chose to build the answer himself. Today, golfers arriving in St Andrews can visit a distillery only minutes away, and a new Lowland single malt destination stands on the edge of the fairways that inspired its creation.

Sources

1. Companies House (UK), Douglas Barclay Clement, find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

2. Welcome to Fife, “From Dream to Dram: Kingsbarns Distillery”, 1 January 2015, welcometofife.com

3. Rotary Club of St Andrews, “Douglas Clement from Kingsbarns Distillery”, 24 February 2016, rotary-ribi.org/clubs

4. Whiskypedia, “The Kingsbarns Company of Distillers”, scotchwhisky.com

5. Kingsbarns Distillery blog, “Building a Single Malt Distillery: Part 1 of 3 with William Wemyss”, 6 October 2021, kingsbarnsdistillery.com

6. The Fife Whisky Tour, “About/Kingsbarns”,  fifewhiskytour.com

7. Dream to Dram Tours (blog), “Why Dream to Dram Tours?”,  24 September 2024, dreamtodramtours.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview,Tennessee USA