The Secret to Great Finnish Whisky? It Starts in a Sauna

From a drunken sauna idea to a global brand, Kyrö has turned Finland’s national grain and pastime into one of the most distinctive distilleries on the planet. 

The lighting is low, the walls are dark wood, the back bar glows with premium bottles. You could be in London, New York or Tokyo. But then you notice that very few people are wearing much at all, even though there is snow on the ground outside. That’s because around the back of this bar is a fully-functioning sauna.

This is the Kyrö Sauna Bar, a pop-up in central Helsinki, now in its second year, and it is exactly what it sounds like. A bar. With a sauna. It tells you almost everything you need to know about Kyrö, the Finnish rye whisky distillery behind it. Serious about quality and completely unserious about convention.

“If anyone was ever going to build a sauna bar, it was going to be us,” says Mikko Kiskinen, one of Kyrö’s founders. “For Finns, the sauna is where everything happens. Business deals, friendships, arguments, ideas. It’s the most democratic room in the country.”

The idea that started Kyrö also began in a sauna. In 2012, Kiskinen and a group of friends were sweating it out when one of them brought along a bottle of American rye whiskey. “Before that moment, I didn’t even know you could make rye whisky,” he says. “And we all just looked at each other and thought, why on earth are we not doing this in Finland?”

Rye is Finland’s national grain. It underpins its bread, its farming and its food culture. Yet at the time, no one was making whisky from it. “We had absolutely no idea what we were doing,” Kiskinen says, grinning, when talking about those early years. “The learning curve was brutal.”

Today, that learning has been done. Kyrö is Finland’s first and most internationally successful whisky distillery, exporting around 80 percent of its whisky to 35 countries, and has become one of the most distinctive spirits brands in the world.

Getting there still feels like a pilgrimage. From London, it’s a flight via Stockholm over the Gulf of Bothnia to Vaasa, then a drive through vast, flat plains that were once seabed. Traditional red-painted wooden barns punctuate endless rye fields. The Reinilänkoski river slips quietly past the distillery when it isn’t frozen. In winter, thick snow blankets everything.

The distillery is made up of a barrel warehouse, production buildings, and a guesthouse that sleeps up to ten people, where visitors eat together, drink together and, inevitably, sauna together. There is one sauna for people. Another for whisky.

See also: Johnnie Walker Vault: Whisky’s Most Exclusive Experience

Kyrö’s Sauna Stories release is aged inside a purpose-built whisky sauna, where temperatures can reach 50°C. The result is not a gimmick, Kiskinen insists, but controlled extremity. “When you heat the barrel like that, everything accelerates,” he says. “You pull more liquid out of the wood. You increase sweetness, that vanilla intensity. You also change what evaporates, so the angel’s share is different. And chemically, you’re increasing the energy in the system, which creates new compounds faster.”

The theory is backed up by extensive testing and produces a richer, rounder, deeper whisky in weeks rather than years. It is the kind of idea that could only come from a country where saunas outnumber cars.

For visitors, the sauna philosophy goes further still. One of Kyrö’s most popular experiences is a whisky tasting where you don’t drink. In a sauna, whisky is poured onto hot stones, and the alcohol vapor rises. “You get the nose, the flavor, everything you would in a [traditional] tasting,” Kiskinen says. “But you don’t get drunk. It’s a fantastic way to enjoy whisky without drinking whisky.” That urge to do things differently runs through the brand. Kyrö’s social content features a disproportionate number of tall, statuesque Finns running through fields, sweating in saunas, and sipping whisky, often completely naked.

See also: Searching for Treasure on The Hebridean Whisky Trail

For all the playfulness, Kyrö takes its liquid seriously. It works exclusively with Finnish rye grown for human consumption rather than animal feed. The colder northern climate produces smaller grains with more concentrated flavor. The whisky is 100 percent rye, which is malted, softening the aggressive spice people often associate with American rye and creating something distinctly its own. A fact reflected in the plaudits Kyrö has won internationally, namely whisky of the year at the 2024 International Spirit Awards for its Oloroso expression. 

“If you like Scotch single malt, there’s a high chance you’ll enjoy what we make,” Kiskinen says. And he’s right. Kyrö Malt Rye Whisky, the brand’s flagship dram, offers sweet apricot and dried fruit on the nose, followed by vanilla and caramel with bursts of black pepper and nutmeg on the palate. It feels closer to an aged Balvenie than a Rittenhouse Rye.

Among the current wave of Nordic whisky producers, Kyrö still stands apart. It is not trying to be Scotch, nor is it trying to be American. It is unmistakably Finnish. And like its makers, it is confident, warm-hearted and wonderfully quirky.