Tasting notes:
It seems just like yesterday that the Wolfburn distillery way up in Thurso, in the north of Scotland, was constructed and started production. It doesn’t feel like it’s already a year ago that I paid them a visit. And yet here it is: Their first general release of a three-year-old Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Well, let’s get cracking and see how it turned out!
Colour: pale white wine
The nose opens on a waft of alcohol – it is bottled at 46% – with a hint of peat smoke from the maturation in quarter casks which previously held peated whisky. There are also notes of shortbread with sweet icing, vanilla pods, freshly ground malt, sweet grape juice and a slight grapefruit rind and juice tingle. The quarter casks did a great job on the clean distillate – no harsh youthfulness anymore. Continue reading “Tasting: Wolfburn 3 yo First Release”

Who’s heard of Thurso before? Besides those on the way to catch a ferry to the Orkneys? I guess not many. So where exactly is it? Well, it’s a beautiful 2,5 hour drive north of Inverness and the largest most northerly city/town in mainland Scotland with about 9000 inhabitants. And, since 2013, there’s also a whisky distillery (again), Wolfburn, named after and situated besides the place where there once was a distillery by the same name (and using the same water source, the Wolf Burn) in the 1800s . Not much is known about the old distillery, so let’s talk about the new one:

Wolfburn distillery - the sight as you enter the production building — Wolfburn distillery – the sight as you enter the production building

Founded by a private group of investors, including a man from the Caithness area, wherein Thurso lies, it was built in a very short period of time between August 2012 and January 2013, with the first spirit flowing on the 25th of January 2013. To pull all of this off, they hired Shane Fraser, previously production manager at Glenfarclas, to oversee the design, building and running of the place and to this date the distillery is run by Shane and colleague Iain, previously with Balmenach. Continue reading “Visiting Wolfburn – the most notherly distillery on the Scottish mainland”