Filey Bay Orange Wine Barrique

Spirit of Yorkshire is Yorkshire's first ever single malt whisky distillery, located in Hunmanby, near Filey Bay on the Yorkshire Coast.

For Spirit of Yorkshire it is about doing things properly. That is why they're obsessed with every step of the distilling process, from grain to glass. Mentored by renowned whisky expert Dr. Jim Swan, their instinctive approach is to create a whisky that doesn't just replicate Scotch. This doesn't mean they rely on blind luck, they take the best of tradition and apply new thinking to create something unique.

All the barley used is grown in Hunmanby, on the family farm, and the water is taken from two sources, sunk deep into the chalk. The team is in control at every stage of the growing and distilling process, from choosing the variety of barley and how it is grown, right through to bottling on site at the distillery. Very few other distilleries in the UK can claim this

Spirit of Yorkshire have invested in two of the largest Forsyth pot stills operating in the UK outside of Scotland. They also added a four-plate copper column into their process that works in tandem with the spirit still to add variance to the Spirit of Yorkshire distillery. This is all part of the commitment to combining tradition with new thinking to create something out of the ordinary. The stills were fired up for the first time in May 2016 and there are already thousands casks of various types being used, including sherry butts and bourbon casks, all of which will help create the subtle, complex flavours of the unique spirit.

FILEY BAY ORANGE WINE BARRIQUE CASK FINISH

Over the last few years, deep within SOY's warehouse, four ex-orange wine barriques have been happily maturing for this deliciously different special release. But this isn’t the skin contact orange wine you’d expect to find on the list of your local artisan wine bar.

“Vino Naranja del Condado de Huelva” comes from a very specific part of Spain, taking the sunshine and oranges that the south is famous for. Made in a similar way to other fortified wines but with a key difference: the grape spirit used to fortify the base wine has been aromatised with orange peel before being matured.

Matured for just over 7 years, firstly in ex-bourbon casks for 3 years and 3 months, to soften the spirit, before being reduced to 50% abv and then re-racked into orange wine casks for a further 3 years and 10 months.

Over the years the abv has slowly slipped away as the angels took their share. In this very rare example, the strength in the bottle of 46.2% is the strength that the whisky reached in the cask all on its own with no final reduction before bottling.

The natural reduction of strength over many years in the orange wine casks is a big part of what makes this whisky so soft and delicious. It’s a process that requires constant checking of the casks to make sure we get the whisky out at precisely the right time.

Tasting Notes

Only 1100 bottles.

Soft and fruity with flavours of orange cake, honeycomb, ripe citrus and stone fruits.