The Spirit of Yorkshire

The Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery Team 24/12/2019

Living: The Year that Was

We’ve just passed cask 2000, filled last week by our distiller Dom, Whisky Director Joe, and Co-Founder David. It’s now sitting comfortably in the warehouse, not to be seen again for a while. It felt like a really good way to round off a busy year… We started 2019 as a fledgling distillery and we end it as whisky-makers. Three years of waiting came to pass in June, meaning that we really and truly had Yorkshire’s first whisky in our warehouse. Then somehow it was the autumn and we were... Read More

Presenting Filey Bay First Release Bottle No. 1 from the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery 13/01/2020

Distilling: Bottle No. 1

Bottle No. 1 from any distillery is always very special. Some distilleries auction them off, some keep hold of them, some are probably much too old to remember their first bottle!  We decided to run a competition for ours. Purchasing a limited edition and entering the special code within entered you into the draw to win the first ever bottle from Yorkshire’s first ever distillery. We had hundreds of entries and in mid-November we drew the winning name using a random number generator.  The winner was John, from a village... Read More

The top of the Filey Bay Whisky bottle, saying 'Field to Bottle' 02/01/2020

Enjoying: Filey Bay Stockists

We’re often being asked by those a bit further afield about where you can buy Filey Bay around the country.  Our ‘stockists’ list is now live on the website! Just head here to see where you can get your Filey Bay bottles / drams if you’re not local to the Yorkshire Coast and would rather have the bottle there and then, rather than buying online.

The Filey Bay Whisky Carton, from the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery 01/01/2020

Enjoying: Looking ahead to 2020

We have all sorts of interesting and exciting things in plan for this year, from single malt releases to new clothing in the distillery shop, to great music lined up for our monthly Distillery Sessions. To stay on board with us and hear about what’s happening at the distillery first, please sign up to our newsletter: http://bit.ly/2HriUOD.

Map of Filey Bay from inside the whisky carton 22/11/2019

Focus on: naming our whisky

In this month’s ‘Focus on’ we’ll be talking you through how we got to our name: Filey Bay.   One of the best things about working for a small company is that it’s personal. Every member of staff (and their families!) is so closely connected to the business that everyone has thoughts and ideas. This is great, especially for things like names. What to call the whisky had been up for debate for years. We went back and forth about whether to use the distillery name as the lead (as... Read More

Tom and David, co-founders of the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery, talk to the Yorkshire Post about the distillerys field to bottle process 22/10/2019

Growing: Field to Bottle in the Yorkshire Post

Field to bottle is a really important phrase for us. It’s one of our most crucial points of difference and it’s totally authenticate because we’ve been farmers and connected to agriculture for far longer than we’ve been making whisky. In fact, we’ve been growing malting barley here on our farm on the Yorkshire Wolds since 1945. We understand our land and we’re always looking for new ways to farm more sustainably and ensure the farm continues to thrive long into the future.  In this weekend’s Yorkshire Post, Tom and David... Read More

Harvest at Hunmanby Grange in the 1940s/50s. An open cab tractor pulls along an early style combine. Very different from present day combines! 28/08/2019

Growing: Harvest

Growing: Harvest August means one thing for farmers: harvest. The culmination of a year of growing. Here on our farm at Hunmanby Grange, harvest began little later than most, as all our crops this year are ‘spring’ varieties, meaning that they’re not planted until the spring.  A bit of background The word ‘harvest’ comes from the Old English haerf-est which meant ‘autumn’ and/or ‘august’ and signified the period in the calendar when the crops had reached maturity and were ready to be gathered in. The main principles behind the harvesting... Read More

Guided tastings by distiller Dom 24/08/2019

Enjoying: Open Day 2019

We had a brilliant time at our Open Day on the 10th August. We loved seeing you all and showing you round the distillery. The Masterclasses worked really well (That coffee! That fish! That chocolate!) and it was great to see how much enthusiasm and positivity there is about what we’re doing here in Hunmanby. See you again next year! 

Living: Countryfile Live

For obvious reasons, we’re big fans of Countryfile here at the Spirit of Yorkshire. And we know that we’re not alone. This week, only Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Poldark had more people watching than Countryfile, a programme dedicated to rural areas – incredible!  Earlier this year, we were really pleased to hear that a northern Countryfile Live was coming to Castle Howard, near Malton, about 30 minutes drive from the distillery. And we were even more pleased when Spirit of Yorkshire and the Wold Top Brewery were asked by the Rural... Read More

Growing: Collaborations

As an area, Yorkshire definitely ‘over indexes’ on incredible food producers, doing really interesting and exciting things. Some of these are world famous and household names but some are much smaller, founder-run businesses who excel in one area. It’s this mix that we think makes the food and drink of the county so special. Over the past few years, we’ve been partnering and collaborating with some of, we think, the best producers in the area, developing new products that fuse our spirit with their foods – ‘growing’ but from a... Read More