The Spirit of Yorkshire

Living: Favourite Yorkshire Places – NYMR

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway runs from Pickering to Whitby in full steam style, stopping at stations across the moors. It’s been used in countless films, is always exciting to see or travel on, and showcases some of the most beautiful places on the moors. One of our favourite stations is Newtondale Halt – you have to request the stop and there’s nothing there but a platform, but it leads to stunning walks and a real sense of peace. Photo credit: NYMR

Enjoying: Taking the train to Hunmanby

We really appreciate that one of the few challenges with whisky tours is that, usually, someone has to drive. Drivers drams are available but equally, it’s nice to be able to enjoy the tastings with your friends in the moment at the Distillery. To help with this, we’ve been working with the team at Hunmanby station to match up the best trains to go with our tours so that you can travel from Scarborough, Seamer and Filey, (or Bridlington, Driffield and Hull in the other direction), without worrying about driving... Read More

Growing: Grow Yorkshire

Both Tom and David, our two co-founders, have agricultural backgrounds and both are passionate about evolving farming to be relevant to today, rather than just doing things because it’s how they’ve always been done. It’s what led Tom to set up the Wold Top Brewery (our sister brewery) in 2003, and what then gave both Tom and David the idea of the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery a decade later. Grow Yorkshire is a great new initiative focused on inspiring Yorkshire farmers to grow their businesses beyond the usual – they... Read More

Planting barley at Hunmanby Grange 09/04/2019

Growing: Barley

Over the next few months on our blog we’ll be focusing on key production areas at our distillery. First up: Barley. We’re in a pretty unique position as whisky distilleries go, ‘field-to-bottle’ production in the whisky industry is a real rarity. Field-to-bottle to us means that every drop of spirit that runs from our stills can be traced back to the fields on our farm so naturally, as you might expect, we take barley seriously. This unique perspective allows us to look at barley with three hats on so to... Read More

Enjoying: Whisky and Chocolate

Sounds delicious right? Right! Max (from Bullion Chocolate) and Joe, our Whisky Director, spent a Friday night in March pairing chocolate with whisky and discussing why they go so well together. Bullion are craft chocolatiers from Sheffield and their ethos echoes our – a meticulous obsession with creating an incredible product, from start to finish. 

Enjoying: Radio York’s “Bek by the Sea”

We’re based right on the coast and we love it. So we were really pleased to welcome Bek Homer to the Distillery to feature on her “Bek by the Sea” show on Radio York. Bek chatted to nearly all of the team, and some members of the public, about all the different aspects of making, selling and enjoying whisky, as well as the other things that we do here at the Spirit of Yorkshire. And it was extra special as Bek lives in Hunmanby too, so she’d actually walked over... Read More

Enjoying: The Tour de Yorkshire at the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery

The Tour de Yorkshire will pass through Hunmanby on stage 3 (4th May), as it takes a very circuitous route from Bridlington to Scarborough (definitely not just going straight along the A165!) We’re big fans of cycling here at the Spirit of Yorkshire and we’re thrilled that Hunmanby features on the course again – it’s not often you get world class cyclists flying through the village – and so we’ve got a few things planned in honour of the event…  Key times: the women will pass through the village at around 9am, with... Read More

Living: Favourite Yorkshire Places

Hunmanby Gap – only a couple of miles from the Distillery, it’s part of Filey Bay and we all love it. For clearing our heads, walking the dogs or tiring out kids, you’ll usually find one of us there, rain or shine. 

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Enjoying: Blind Tasting World Whisky

As discussed by David in The Spirits Business at the end of last year, we consider the category of ‘World Whisky’ to be more important than specific country names. In celebration of this, last week we hosted a World Whisky Tasting at the Distillery, with a selection of drams from around the world, curated by our Whisky Director, Joe. The Distillery was packed and guests were given six whiskies to blind taste and discuss. But there was a twist… one of the six was a Spirit of Yorkshire Oloroso Cask,... Read More

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Distilling: our thoughts on English Whisky regulations

In the print edition of Spirits Business from November 2018 and online now, our director David (along with Dan from the Cotswold Distillery, Andy from the East London Liquor Company, and Paul from The Lakes Distillery) was asked for his thoughts on the English whisky market and what the impact of imposing regulations for English whisky could be. His take on things? Regulation is necessary to ensure quality but there’s a balance; rules shouldn’t impact on innovation. And everyone agreed that it’s not just about English whisky as a category... Read More