Profile: Wolfburn reborn

Back in 2021, I set out on a charity walk along the John O’Groats trail from Inverness to Thurso in the very north of Scotland. I made sure to stop at every distillery along the way, but none came sweeter than Wolfburn distillery, which marked my finish line. 11 days, 170 miles and one pair of walking boots later, I was left with a question lingering in my mind; why build a distillery so far north?

Wolfburn ambassador, Mark Westmorland, tells me one of the distillery’s founders grew up in Wick, just 20 miles from Thurso. But there’s a little more to it than that.

“He always had a bit of a fascination with the closed distilleries in the area,” explains Mark. “One day he went looking for the ruins of the original Wolfburn distillery on the outskirts of Thurso. After yomping across the moors, he managed to find the foundation stones. We know a distillery named Wolfburn stood there in 1821, and tax records show that in 1825 it was the largest whisky producer in Caithness that year. We could see the distillery on some Ordnance Survey maps of the time, until one indicated the distillery was in ruins. We don’t really know what happened to it, or why.”

While closed distilleries are usually accompanied by a sadness and curiosity over their forgotten knowledge and flavour, this time things would be different. Instead, this discovery was a spark of inspiration for the founders to bring whisky production back to the area. Fast-forward to 2012, and the new Wolfburn distillery did just that. Forsyths built and installed the entire distillery kit and the first cask was filled on 25 January 2013.

While the site welcomes visitors, “it’s a bring your own coffee and sandwiches kind of place,” says Mark. Wolfburn is unlike most distilleries you’ll visit. While many opt for a well-polished, highly branded experience, Wolfburn is an altogether different beast. On entering you’re first hit by the daring display of distilling operations; the stills, washbacks and mash tun all live right there in front of you. With the distillery shop hosted on a stretch of the warehouse wall, this stripped back form of authenticity will resonate with many more than any carefully curated visitors’ experience.

The stars of the show are the 5,500-litre wash still and its 3,800-litre spirit counterpart. Slightly less conspicuous are the ex-Caperdonich washbacks, though these aren’t used for fermentation. “When building a new distillery, you do want to include a nod to the past,” says Mark. “For us, this means the two old Caperdonich distillery washbacks – one of them as a water tank for the spring water we take from the Wolf Burn, and one for our waste. We try not to get them mixed up for obvious reasons! It keeps us humble and mindful of history and it’s also a great example of upcycling!”

The water tank fills the 1.1 tonne mash tun which cooks malted barley to extract wort. This is then fermented in four stainless steel washbacks in which the wort is hand pitched with dry Anchor yeast and left to ferment for three to four days. The result is a light, fruity and floral distillate, matching what is traditionally described as a Highland style. With age, crushed shells and some slightly more coastal elements appear, providing structure to the whisky.

For two months each year however, that style changes when the distillery switches to a peated malted barley with a phenol level of 10 parts per million (PPM). This produces a very rare, slightly smoky, fruity and gently coastal whisky. Mark continues: “We aren’t a massive distillery, with a production of around 125,000 litres of alcohol per year, so this is a rare whisky. The region’s history is inextricably linked to peat. The Flow Country is just south of the distillery; it’s the largest peat bog in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Obviously, our peat’s not cut there, but with the original 1800s Wolfburn distillery using peat as a fuel source, we felt we needed a nod to that part of our tradition. For our own purposes we release that peated whisky under the name Morven, after the steep hill that dominates and overlooks the Flow Country.”