Whittaker’s Whisky: Tantalising drop of a Yorkshire whisky as award-winning gin maker tackles new tipple

“In 2018 our original gin won best international gin at American Distilling Institute awards and it seemed like a great excuse to jump on a plane to America to collect the award,” says Toby.

"While we were there there was an exhibition for all types of distilling equipment. We’d just decided that we wanted to get into making whisky and the equipment suppliers were there ready and waiting to do business with us. We were pretty much guinea pigs with this particular company."

Unlike gin which sees a pretty quick return (it’s ready in about two months), it takes a minimum of three years for a whisky to be ready to be moved from cask to bottle and then into the shops.

"It’s big investment and we were helped with a grant from LEDER and North Yorkshire County Council which helped us pay for the new building.”

In the end Whittaker’s Whisky has taken four and half years to get to the stage where they were happy to bottle it – bottling is due to take place any day with the first going on sale on August 1, Yorkshire Day, although you can preorder.

“We tasted it after three years and it hadn’t age enough for our liking.” So Toby went about putting the whisky into smaller casks which speeds up the process.

“It’s a lot of trial and error we are not seasoned professionals when it comes to making whisky – we are the new kids on the block although we do get advice and help from distillers in Scotland who have been doing it all their lives.”

He said people throughout the industry have been keen to help this fledgling Yorkshire business. "In Scotland people seem to work for all different distillers and so they are happy to share their knowledge as nothing is really a great secret.”

Toby explains that unlike other whisky, English whisky has to be made from English barley. But he likes to go one step further and, like his gin his whisky is Yorkshire through and through.

“The water is from the spring on our farm and the great thing about making whisky is that you are starting from a piece of barley which is grown at the end of the River Nidd on another family farm in Ferrensby owned by my brother in Law Andrew Cumming and my sister Ione where they grow distilling barley.

"It is nice to look at the pictures of them combining the barley and know that that is in our whisky,” he says. “It feels good that you are reducing the food mile as much as possible from an environmental point of view.”

The barley is then malted and milled at fifth generation family run business Thomas Fawcett & Sons Ltd in Castleford, West Yorkshire.

“It arrives back here in two or three tonnes at a time in a state ready for me to begin the whisky making process. It is grown in Yorkshire, it’s malted in Yorkshire and then we get our hands on it.”

He explains that the first stage of making whisky is similar to making beer. “You get a big vessel, the mash tub, and you soak the grain in there specifically between 60C and 65C which breaks the starch down in to sugars – called maltose which is why it is called malt whisky.”

The maltose is transferred into bag stainless steel fermentation vessels and a powdered yeast is added. “Yeast is a funny thing if you don’t treat that correctly at the right temperatures you won’t convert the sugars into alcohol. Unlike with beer, your distiller’s beer as its called at this stage only has barley, yeast and water – no hops and no added extras.”

"Although this stage can be done in 48 hours, Toby leaves it for five days to get further reaction with bacteria," says Toby who studied chemistry at degree level. “I’m not a scientist at any level but I think what’s important is that I’m not afraid of it.”

After five days, with the help of some whisky loving volunteers, he transfers the distiller’s beer into one of the copper stills and brings it up to a boil. A few days later the low wines that are created are transferred to another copper still and the process is repeated.

"This is the complicated but,” says Toby. “You have to get the good bits of distillation. The first bit is call the heads and that doesn’t taste great, it’s similar to making gin although it is much trickier with whisky.

"With barley things vary and so you have to pay attention to the temperature and the smell and understand when it is ready to make the cut – from heads to hearts to tails – the hearts is what you want.”

From there the liquid is put into casks,. “You can decide how you want your spirit to taste although it is really rather experimental. But 70 per cent of the flavour comes from the wood in the cask.”

Half of Whitakers casks are ex American bourbon casks, nearly 30 per cent sherry and then a variety of ones offs – including one Toby had especially imported from Hungary.

The spirit then spends four and a half years in the cask before it is ready to be bottled. At the moment Toby has 200 casks of whisky all at different stages of the ageing process. He reckons he makes around 50 casks a year.

“We are a small distillery, which means unlike the big producers it is harder for us to get consistency from year to year so like a wine there will be a 2024 version and then a 2025 version which will be slightly different. On the flip side is that if you are small we have focused on the quality and the variety. A small independent producer should equal more lateral thinking.”

For Toby, the waiting game is the biggest challenge, but he says it is vital.

"Originally I put a line in the sand about two years ago and said it would be August 1 – the fifth anniversary of opening this place because you’ve got to start at some point.

“I buy a lot of whisky especially new ones and you taste one that’s three years old and it might be good but you know that in two or three more years it will be so much better but is tough because you aren’t getting any revenue in.”

That is one of the decisions that he and wife Jane decided to continue making gin alongside the whisky.

"People come in here and buy bottes of gin - it keeps the lights on. We are still very small we chose to invest in whisky as opposed to getting a big sales force and growing the gin. I’m not saying we were right or wrong but it’s what we preferred to do.”

Whittaker’s whisky is very much for the purest and Toby has set a price point to reflect that.

“It’s difficult because I want the whole world to drink the whisky but I can’t afford to have it at that price. We have decided to go for quality rather than quantity. Our whisky costs £75 a bottle.

"It is a lot of money but supplies are limited. We have only made 2,277 bottles of the 48.3% and we know it tastes good. The plan after that is every month do a single cask release.”

For those who can’t wait there is cask release available to order – but at 61% it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Whittaker’s Whisky is available from whittakerswhisky.com and a handful of retailers including Fortnum and Mason in London.