Stauning Whisky's Fight to Keep a Dream Alive

The still room at Stauning is silent.

Copper gleams in the morning light. Rows of stills —24 in total—stand in neat lines, like sleeping instruments waiting for a conductor. But there’s no heat in the coils. No sound of bubbling wash. No spirit dripping into the safe.

Stauning still sells whisky. Its warehouses are stocked, the brand remains strong, the whisky is flowing—into glasses, not stills. But what is a whisky distillery that no longer distills? That’s a difficult question. A distillery can stay alive on cask sales for a while. But when the spirit isn’t being made, it’s like a heart that’s stopped beating—waiting for revival or reality to sink in.

This isn’t a story of failure. But it is a story of reckoning, one that says as much about the state of craft whisky today as it does about Stauning itself. At its center stands Hans Martin Hansgaard, one of nine co-founders and reluctant witness to a dream in stasis.

“We Always Made Things Ourselves”

Hansgaard is a passionate cyclist, though he jokes he’s “too tall and heavy to be a competitive racer.” Instead, he channels that energy into making things. He builds vintage titanium bikes by hand, just as he helped put together the original Stauning stills and forged a distillery from a backroom butchery. “From the beginning,” he says, “We always made things ourselves. Not just whisky—everything.”

The idea began in 2005, in a summer house on the Danish coast. Martin Vesterby, a doctor and one of the founders, had heard a radio program about whisky production. He wasn’t a whisky geek, but it stuck with him: barley, yeast, water—that’s all you need. And Denmark had all three, in abundance. Why wasn’t anyone making whisky here?

He gathered a few trusted friends, who gathered their friends. Hansgaard was brought in because he was “the whisky guy,” a special needs teacher by profession, but a passionate drinker and thinker when it came to spirits.

Each of the nine founders put in 15,000 Danish kroner, about $2,300 at the time. They bought two stills from Portugal, installed them in a 25-square-metre tiled butchery, and started experimenting. The idea was to fill a cask every now and then, as a weekend hobby. Their approach—including floor maltings and hand-turning grains and the use of local peat and rye—became the backbone of their philosophy.

From Butchery to Global Stage

Over the years, Stauning grew—cautiously, deliberately. From the butchery to farm buildings. From nine hobbyists to a professional operation. The core values stayed the same: do everything yourself, make it local, and never compromise on flavor.

Then, in 2015, the big shift came: Diageo, through its accelerator program Distill Ventures, invested in Stauning. It was a bold move for both parties. Stauning was tiny compared to the scotch giants in Diageo’s portfolio, but their spirit, especially their smoked single malt and 100% malted Danish rye, had captured attention.

With Diageo’s support, Stauning built a purpose-designed distillery. A set of angular buildings, inspired by the fishing huts around Ringkøbing Fjord, were constructed on the edge of the village. “When you scale up, everyone tells you to get bigger stills,” Hans said. “But all our best whiskies had come from small ones. So we said no. We’d rather manage the complexity than lose the character.”

Floor maltings were kept. Direct-fired stills stayed. Even the original flame-fed stills from the farm were preserved, right down to the burn marks on the floor. “We could have painted over it,” Hans said. “Made it look cleaner. But that’s our history.”

When the Money Moves On

When the development was complete, Stauning had an annual capacity of 1 million liters, though they weren’t producing at full tilt. Sales were healthy, international distribution was growing, and the U.S. market was being actively developed.

And then, in early 2025, the bottom fell out.

Diageo quietly announced it would no longer support new investments through Distill Ventures and would wind down its involvement in existing partnerships. Stauning, like others in the portfolio, suddenly found itself without a financial safety net. “It was a shock,” Hansgaard said. “We had no warning. Suddenly, we had to change everything.”

The U.S. team was let go, production was halved, and the stills were turned off. Not because the whisky wasn’t good. Not because the business had failed. But because the runway vanished.

What Are We Without the Making?

Walking through the silent still room with Hansgaard was a quiet emotional moment. “This is the heart of the distillery,” he said. “But if it’s not pumping, if nothing’s flowing...is it still a heart?”

Stauning can continue selling from its stock for years. Like many distilleries, it lays down far more than it bottles each year. But something changes when a distillery stops making spirit. It becomes a brand, not a producer. A story, not a process. And for a place like Stauning, which built its identity on process, that’s an existential shift.

“Without the making,” Hansgaard ponders, “what are we?”

Rye, Smoke, and the Danish Soul

At the heart of Stauning’s uniqueness is its approach to rye. Unlike the American standard — often unmalted and blended with corn or wheat — Stauning’s rye is 100% malted, double-distilled in copper pot stills, and shaped with the same care as single malt.

Rye is deeply Danish. “We eat rye bread every day,” Hansgaard explains. “It’s our national food, really.” So it made sense to make whisky with it. Stauning smoked malts with local peat and heather, and matured its distillate in mezcal, Tabasco, and balsamic vinegar casks. Some experiments failed, but others revealed entirely new flavors.

Now, with production paused, the focus is on consolidation—going through the archive of experiments. Finding what worked. Scaling down to the best. Preparing for whatever comes next.

What Keeps a Founder Going?

Hansgaard is not one for drama. He doesn’t speak in soundbites. He reflects, then replies. But when I asked him what it has meant to carry this through, his words were unusually sharp. “I was 27 when we started,” he said. “I’d just qualified as a teacher. I thought I was building a fun side project. But now... It’s shaped my whole adult life. This is my life.”

There was no bitterness in his voice. Just reality, and gratitude as well. “I’m lucky. To have built something like this—even now,” he added.

Between Chapters

The story of Stauning is far from over, but it is between chapters. "We will still make some alcohol, (with a) focus on developing and innovation," said co-founder Alex Munch. But the team is still figuring out what they can afford to do—which markets to remain in, how to keep the lights on, the stills warm, and the spirit alive.

They’re not alone. Around the world, other distilleries are asking the same questions: Can we scale without selling out? Can we hold our values and pay our staff? Can we find a way back when the money walks away?

Some will. Others won’t. Stauning isn’t quite finished yet.