Theakston: How famous Yorkshire Dales brewery is turning its hand to whisky for the first time

“It seems like yesterday that we bought the company back,” says Simon, surrounded by the paraphernalia accumulated over two decades as managing director. Framed awards line the walls of his modest office where bottles of beer fight for space with brewery merchandise and paperwork. “The night of the sale, honestly, it seemed like a dream. We had spent the best part of a day with the solicitor and then suddenly that was it - it was ours again.

“Since that day we have been committed to being a premium brewery, one which honours its history but which isn’t afraid to look forward and do things a little differently.”

The opportunity to buy the company back was in part down to serendipity as S&N looked to restructure its operations and chance has also played its part in its foray into spirits.

The new Theakston whisky - the brand name is still in the marketing pipeline and a grand reveal is planned for a later date - was the brainchild, not of Simon, but of Chris Fraser, the former CEO of Sirius Minerals, the company behind a controversial fertiliser mine in the North York Moors National Park.

“At home we had lots of apples dropping from trees - way too many to eat - and I had time on my hands,” admits Chris, who moved to North Yorkshire with his family from Australia in 2012. “We started doing a bit of research and realised that we could use them to produce vodka.”

What began as a kitchen table experiment soon morphed into something much bigger. Master distiller Jamie Baggott was recruited to oversee production and today Ellers Farm Distillery, in the village of Buttercrambe, manufactures its trademark Dutch Barn Orchard Vodka alongside a range of gins and fruit liqueurs.

With one eye on sustainability - the company is committed to having net zero carbon emissions by 2040 at the latest - and keen on using local producers, when Chris had the idea for a whisky he hit on the idea of collaborating with a local brewery to create the basic wash.

“It just seemed to make sense,” he says. “Most whisky distilleries make their own wash using malted barley. It is exactly the same base as beer, just without the hops, but it is often quite soapy and 75 per cent of the final taste comes from the casks in which it is aged. We began to wonder what would happen if you began with a wash which actually tasted good right from the start and reckoned that Theakston, which has so much knowledge about the brewing process, would be the perfect partner.”

Simon didn’t take much convincing and having designed a wash based on a porter-style beer the first load left the Theakston site a year ago to travel the 40 or so miles south to the distillery, which has the capacity to produce more than one million litres a year.

“It’s been a really exciting journey for the brew team,” adds Simon. “We are always designing new beers so we are not afraid of innovation but to transfer those same skills to a completely new drink feels like a good way to mark almost two centuries of brewing here in Masham.”

That initial shipment has been followed by countless others. Following distillation, the liquid is being aged in oak casks which once held Kentucky Heaven Hill bourbon and the unavoidable waiting game has now begun. While vodka takes just two weeks to produce and beer about six, alongside the barley and the yeast, a good whisky also requires a large helping of patience.

Distilleries are required to wait three years for their spirit to mature before they can even call it a whisky and single malt connoisseurs often refuse to drink anything that is less than 10 years old.

To maintain interest in the whisky as it matures, Chris and Simon have set up The Founders Release investment programme to allow enthusiasts to buy one of the initial 38 casks. The £8,000 asking price will get you around 350 bottles and may prove a canny investment - in uncertain financial markets recent research revealed whisky was a safer bet than bitcoin or gold.

Next month there will also be a limited edition release of The Bairn. The colourless spirit - effectively the pre-aged whiskey - is the first glimpse of what the final drink will taste like and having picked up a gold medal at the recent World Whisky Masters 2023 awards the early signs are looking good.

“This is a really special collaboration and we want to take people with us on our journey,” says Chris. “Every six months we will be releasing another batch of The Bairn so people can see for themselves how the spirit is maturing.”

While Scotland, boasting more than 140 distilleries, remains the traditional home of whisky, recently there has been a rapid expansion south of the border with distillers hoping to replicate the renaissance gin has enjoyed.

Distilleries have popped up everywhere from Blackpool to a west London industrial estate and Humnaby, near Filey, is now credited as the birthplace as Yorkshire’s first ever single malt having begun production of the Spirit of Yorkshire in 2016.

With whisky accounting for 17 per cent of the £1.5bn spirits market, it is also attracting a much wider demographic. Women in the UK now drink 40 million more glasses of whisky a year than they did in 2010 - a rise of 15% - and the spirit is also gaining traction with younger drinkers as millennials discover the joys of the water of life.

“We may not be far geographically from Scotland, but we are part of the burgeoning New World Whisky scene,” says Chris. “Because this branch of the industry is new there is a greater degree of innovation and desire to experiment. We are not trying to replicate a traditional Scottish whisky, we are very much ploughing our own furrow and that is really exciting.”

For Simon, the success of the Theakston whisky will be its blend of the traditional and the innovative but also its ability to conjure a specific time and place.

“In Scotland whisky is tied to the landscape and there is something quite romantic about it. I like to think that same element of romance can be had here in Yorkshire with its moors and rolling hills.

“What would my great great grandfather think of Theakston whisky? Oh I like to think he would be charmed, amused and excited in equal measure - it is what we were born to do.”

To find out more go to ellersfarmwhisky.com

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