Wolfburn Aurora

Wolfburn is the Scottish mainland’s most northerly distillery, located on the northern coast in the town of Thurso in Caithness. Wolfburn was constructed in 2012 just 350 metres from the site of the original Wolfburn distillery, a short-lived 19th-Century operation that closed for the final time in 1852. 

The modern Wolfburn distillery commenced operations on a pair of small pot stills in January 2013, and released its inaugural single malt whiskies in 2016. The distillery is equipped with a pair of very small stills, uses clear wort and practises long fermentations for a fruity, malty new make spirit, around 10% of which is peated. The distillery now bottles a wide range of single malts mostly matured in ex-bourbon or sherry casks. At the time of writing in 2023 no independent Wolfburn has yet been released.

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.