Wolfburn Distillery

The original Wolfburn was founded in 1821 by William Smith, taking its name from the nearby Wolf Burn, or stream. It didn't take long to make a name for itself: by 1826, Wolfburn was producing around 125,000 litres of spirit a year, making it the largest distillery in Caithness at the time.

But after several decades of production, Wolfburn fell silent in the mid-19th century. The exact date is a little murky, although the distillery is generally thought to have closed around 1858–1860, with its equipment eventually sold off. For more than 150 years, Wolfburn was little more than a memory and a few stones marking where it had once stood.

Then in 2012, a new distillery was built just a short distance from the original site, with the same Wolf Burn still providing its water. Construction began in 2012, and on 25 January 2013 (Burns Night) the first new Wolfburn spirit flowed from the stills.

Without trying to recreate the old distillery exactly, the new Wolfburn embraces traditional whiskymaking and a mostly analogue approach. Production, maturation and bottling all take place in Thurso, with long fermentation, copper pot stills and plenty of time doing much of the heavy lifting.

The revived Wolfburn already shows a distinct northern Highland character, all fruity and warming, with the coastal influence you'd expect from a distillery perched near Scotland's rugged north coast. Wolfburn's had quite the journey and its modern whisky has already got collectors scrambling to get their hands on each new release. Not bad for a whisky that spent 150 years asleep.