Wolfburn is a distillery which as a whisky geek and a blogger I’m following closely for it’s always exciting to track and see how a new distillery shapes itself, both on whisky and business fronts, so I knew I want to pay them a visit when I get back to Scotland and visit the northern highlands region.

The staff at the distillery are very friendly. They happily booked the visit and even endured us being late for a hour. After all, it was that ‘late-late-late’ day and I had troubles locating the distillery as it’s not your average looking distillery. They are located in a set of hangers in an industrial park and not somewhere pretty off the road with a pagoda and lots of fields and cattle around them.

Wolfburn is a new and small distillery, producing around 115,000 liters of alcohol a year. Just wow small is it? Everything fits in a single hangar!

Everything is new and shiny even after 2.5 years of production. We were warmly welcomed and were guided through the distillery, were given time to check everything and with lots of patience while taking pictures (I like that ‘feature’ in tours!).

As we were late, we arrived just when the end of day activities started, with the staff preparing for the next day distillation cycle. That gave us the opportunity to see the innards of the still, showing the steam coils in all their glory.

Even though Wolfburn resides in an industrial zone, it’s a small park and Wolfburn distillery are located on the skirts of the park and so when it’s too hot or too cold, climate control is activated and we see that outside it’s beatiful. (In case it wasn’t clear, Wolfburn climate control is opening or closing the shutters 🙂 )

If you had looked at the Panorama picture, you probably noticed something is missing. Right, no casks! in fact, the spirit is pumped from the hangar to the adjunct hangar which serves as a warehouse and there the casks are filled. As the warehouse is full, the full casks are then rolled to the 3rd hangar (A.K.A the second warehouse).

I wondered (worryingly) if there’s enough space in those warehouses for their future casks and they assured me that they have enough space to expand and build 2 more warehouses. In fact, they can even double the distillery capacity (doubling everything in the first hangar)!

Wolfburn tidbits:

 

 

What a small and lovely distillery. I’m eagerly waiting for their official bottlings!

Name: Wolfburn Distillery
Owners: Independant
Location: Thurso
Water source: Wolf Burn
Stills: 1 Wash still, 1 Spirit still
Capacity (yearly): 115,000 litres

Tour in a nutshell

Tours availability: Upon prearrangement
Cost of tour: –
Length of tour: 45min
Distillery Exclusive bottles: No.
Food: No.