Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery

Produced by Spirit of Yorkshire, this is Yorkshires’ first ever whisky and guess what, it’s a winner! All the barley used is grown on the families own farm, giving them control of every stage of the growing and distilling process, from choosing the variety of barley and how it is grown, right through to bottling themselves on site. There are very few distilleries in the UK with this capability.
Filey Bay are aiming to become fully carbon neutral and already have wind turbines in place. The good work does not end here, instead of using traditional ploughing methods the team are practicing ‘Direct Drilling’. This means that rather than discing, ploughing and then drilling the fields as usual, in the autumn they drilled a cover crop of radishes, phacelia and black oats straight into the stubble left from the previous harvest. This cover crop has been specifically chosen to help regenerate the soil, essentially adding nutrients back into the land. The spring barley crop is then sown directly into the land again, so the soil is never turned over and disturbed. Current thinking is that working the land releases carbon back into the air; by keeping the soil undisturbed, that carbon stays in the ground.