Yorkshire is taking on France and Scotland in the booze battle
Yorkshire has just opened its first wine road and a whisky road may be next.
The county now has 16 commercial vineyards and nine wineries, producing 100,000 bottles a year. The area had pedigree as a wine-producing region: the Cistercians of Kirkstall Abbey were early winemakers there, as were the Benedictine monks at Askham Richard. George Bowden’s Leventhorpe vineyard in Woodlesford outside Leeds, which opened in 1985, continues the tradition with a range that includes West Riding Red and Yorkshire Brut.
Look closely and you can find a burgeoning wine industry here. Ryedale, near Malton, planted in 2006, is the most northerly vineyard in Britain, with a portfolio comprising wines such as The Dalesman Sparkling. Laurel Vines in Driffield makes Ortega and Rondo Rose Little, while, in East Riding near Hull and overlooking the Humber, the Wilson family produces Barley Hill white, The Cocked Hat red (named after the shape of the field in which the grapes are grown), Wild Poppy Hill Rose and Alice’s Cuvee (named after the third generation of Wilson winemakers and the first to be married in a British vineyard).
Yorkshire Heart, in Nun Monkton near York, makes Eleanor Red and Latimer White. Collaborating with the Hooting Owl Distillery, its white wine will go into the first Yorkshire-made English brandy.
On the coast, Filey has it all: Edwardian architecture, a historic promenade, a Brigg, brass bands, some of the finest fish and chips in the whole of north Yorkshire, and now a growing reputation for single malt whisky.
Spirit Of Yorkshire Distillery has just unveiled Filey Bay Peated Finish. “This bottling is a much anticipated first,’ says director and co-founder David Thompson, “as we give our light and fruity signature whisky a subtle sweet smokiness by finishing in peated casks.”
“Opinions can sometimes be divided on peated whisky, and this release strikes very much at the middle ground for those who love peated whisky and those who are not so sure,” adds whisky director Joe Clark.
Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery began making whisky in 2016. Located near co-founder Tom Mellor’s working arable farm in Hunmanby, all barley used in production is grown a stone’s throw away, making it one of the only field-to-bottle distilleries in the UK.
The Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery’s initial ‘finished’ range includes the 2016 Filey Bay STR (“Shaving, Roasting and Re-charring”), aged partly in former red wine barriques; Filey Bay Moscatel Finish, aged in Spanish Moscatel wine barrels, and Flagship, the distillery’s first widely-available bottling, following the limited-run First Release and Second Release.
“We’re looking for layers of complexity,” says Clarke.
Using Maris Otter barley, Dr Abbie Neilson and Chris Jaume’s Cooper King Distillery at Sutton hopes to produce its first single malt whisky in 2023. The distillery is England’s only self-built whisky and gin distillery and one of only a handful to run on 100 per cent green energy. Its 900 litre Tasmanian copper pot still is the only one of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere.
So next time you think of a wine excursion, forget the Rhone or even Kent, and if whisky is your bag, don’t give Scotland a second thought: Yorkshire has it all.