Grow what we distil.
Every bottle begins in our own soil — the Kayinja banana and our pineapples, grown organically under an agroforestry and regenerative system. Nothing arrives in a tanker.
Our Story
From a flat in Bra
From a flat in Bra
to a farm in Buganda.
Kayinja was started by two gastronomes who met as roommates in Bra, Italy. One was a winemaker in Barolo; the other was finishing a masters in food industry management. We came home to Uganda with a single idea: to make the first clean, single-varietal banana eau de vie in Africa — grown and distilled ourselves.
The Founders
Nico Nsubuga de Zan-Zak and Kiggwe Livingstone met in the small Piedmontese town of Bra — the home of Slow Food. Kiggwe was making wine in Barolo; Nico was studying the business of good food. Between the two of them sat a question that wouldn't leave: why was there nothing like this back home?
Because the truth was uncomfortable. Almost every commercial spirit in Uganda is built from imported molasses — neutral alcohol stripped of all character, then flavoured to taste like something it isn't. And no one, anywhere in Africa, was making a true fruit eau de vie. The continent grows extraordinary fruit and throws away its spirit.
So we picked the most Ugandan fruit we knew: the Kayinja banana, the dense brewing banana Buganda has fermented into tonto and waragi for generations — now a recognised Slow Food Presidium. We planted it on our own land in Mukono, organically, and set about learning to distil it cleanly: copper pot, heart cut only, nothing added.
The distilling was never the hard part. The hard part was infrastructure — building a clean, working distillery from almost nothing, on red earth an hour north of Kampala. We are still building. But the spirit in the bottle is finally the spirit we crossed two continents to make.
How We Work
Four things we won't compromise.
They're not a manifesto. They're just the lines we've decided not to cross, even when there's a cheaper, faster, easier way around them.
Pursue excellence.
No molasses, no neutral spirit, no added flavour. Clean fermentation, copper pot distillation, heart cut only. We would rather make a little, very well, than a lot of nothing in particular.
Waste nothing.
The estate runs as a closed circle. Spent fruit becomes feed for goats, ducks and pigs; the mistelle rests in local clay sealed with beeswax. Organic in, protein out, nothing to landfill.
Give it back.
Five per cent of profit funds Nabbale Junior School and local education. We're also building an agriturismo, so the sustainable methods we've learned don't stay locked behind our gate.
How It Happened
Four years of wanting.
Four years of wanting.
One of building.
The land was always the point. The distillery is barely a year old — almost everything you see was built since the middle of 2025.
2022
A grandmother's wish.
Kiggwe's grandmother wants the family to stay on the land. That wish becomes the reason for everything that follows — a farm worth staying for.
Jun 2025
We break ground.
After years of planning from two continents, building finally begins on the estate and the distillery, an hour north of Kampala.
Feb 2026
First mistelle sold.
Our pineapple mistelle leaves the gate at the end of February — the first bottles of anything we have ever sold.
Spring 2026
The farm fills in.
The grove and pineapples go in the ground through March and April. Ducks arrive in May; mains power lands in May and June. The circle starts to turn.
Today
Still building.
An agriturismo to teach the methods, a school to keep funding, and a lot of red earth still to plant. We have only just begun.
The People
A small team, on purpose.
Two founders, one estate, and the village around it — held together by a school we help to fund and an agriturismo we're still building.
Co-founder · Gastronome
Nico Nsubuga de Zan-Zak
A masters in food industry management from Italy, and a conviction that Uganda's fruit deserves a spirit with character. Runs the estate and the business.
Co-founder · Gastronome
Kiggwe Livingstone
Trained as a winemaker in Barolo before coming home. Reads fermentation and the still the way some people read weather.
Our Community
Nabbale Junior School
Where five per cent of every profit goes. The reason the farm exists as a circle, not a line — and the heart of the agriturismo to come.
No one in Africa was making eau de vie, and every banana spirit we tasted was flavoured molasses. We thought the fruit deserved better than that.Kiggwe LivingstoneCo-founder · Gastronome
Come See For Yourself
The farm is open
The farm is open
by appointment.
Visits run Thursday through Saturday, eight guests at a time. A walk through the grove, a look at the still, a glass at the end. Tea throughout — and, before long, a place to stay.
Plan a Visit