Spirit Of Yorkshire Filey Bay 2016-2019 - First Release

Spirit of Yorkshire is one of the new wave of English single malt whisky distilleries, founded by David Thompson and Tom Mellor in 2016 at Hunmanby in Yorkshire. Unusually the distillery is housed over two locations, with the stillhouse in Hunmanby near Filey Bay and the mash tun and washbacks located at Mellor’s Wold Top Brewery on his farm a mile or two up the road. Spirit of Yorkshire is a field to bottle distillery, growing their own barley and controlling all aspects of production up to bottling on site.

Spirit of Yorkshire is a small distillery, with a capacity around 80,000 litres of spirit per year, although the stills are relatively large and the spirit still works with an extra rectifying column for greater stylistic flexibility. Spirit of Yorkshire’s English single malt whisky, Filey Bay, made its debut in 2019 to general acclaim and has already won several awards.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.