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$82.99
Wolfburn Morven is a lightly peated single malt bottled at 46% from the Northernmost mainland distillery in Scotland.
Producer Description
"This lightly peated whisky is made from malted barley infused with smoke during the drying process. The flavour imparted by the smoke is a reflection of Wolfburn’s history – the original 19th Century distillery was largely fired by peat. Gentle distillation is followed by maturation in our purpose-built warehouses. The result is a beautifully smooth and rounded whisky."
750ml mlOUT OF STOCK
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Evan's Tasting Note
Nose: light, earthy peat, sea spray, fruit cocktail syrup, creamy oatmeal, toasted pecans, honeydew melon, eucalyptus, mulled apple cider, a touch of grassiness and a hint of leather shoe polish.
Palate: slightly oily but more creamy in style. earthy and nutty, apples, pears, some dried fruits, a touch of saline, ginger, buttercream frosting and lemon zest and mint.
Finish: warming with soft peat, dried fruits and salty, nutty notes sticking around.
Comment: This is a solid young whisky done right, with an approachable nose and enticingly creamy mouthfeel. The peat is a nice touch and adds nuance, as young peated whisky is typically more interesting than unpeated whisky of the same age.
Distiller's Tasting Note
Nose: Initially smoky with hints of fruit and fresh sea air, accompanied by vanilla and oak woodshavings.
Palate: Floral notes abound, followed by raisins and light spices. Malty flavours open up on the palate, with soft honey sweetness at the finish.
The following was written by Andrew Ferguson for Celtic Life Magazine:
The 2010s were a heady time for the Scotch Whisky Industry. With global demand for single malt booming, more new distilleries opened in that decade than any other since the 1890s. On current trend, however, the 2020s might give them a run for their money.
One of the first of these new waves of distilleries to open was Wolfburn, whose stills ran with spirit for the first time on Robbie Burns Day, 2013.
Wolfburn was established in Thurso, the northernmost mainland town in Scotland, which looks across the tempestuous Pentland Firth towards the Orkney Islands. An earlier distillery, also known as Wolfburn, operated a few hundred meters from the site of the current distillery between 1820 and around 1837. Nothing remains of it today, save for a sad pile of stones. Both distilleries took their name from the Wolf Burn, their water source.
Wolves were once common in Scotland, especially in Caithness and the northern Highlands. Even though the last of the creatures were killed off centuries ago, their legacy continued in local culture and place names. Wolfburn’s emblem is inspired by a sketch of a wolf from the 1600s, when they were more common. A sighting of the related, mythical sea-wolf was believed to bring good luck to those who saw it.
It is no easy thing to open a new distillery, and it is not for the faint of heart or those with shallow pockets. As I have noted more than a few times over the years in this column, starting a whisky distillery from scratch is a daunting and expensive undertaking. The startup costs to build or repurpose a building and kit it out can be substantial. But the bigger challenge is operating the distillery and laying down production for years without income, while waiting for the spirit to mature.
In Scotland, as in most of the world, the spirit must have matured at least 3 years in an oak cask before you can legally call it whisky. And that is just the bare minimum - few established distilleries bottle anything under 10 years of age. And while there have been exceptions, there are few 3-year-old whiskies worth writing home about. Many new distilleries have released gins or spirit drinks to help pay the bills, while others, including Wolfburn, have sold cask futures to help with their operating costs.
Wolfburn Distillery was financed and built by the Caithness-based Aurora Brewing consortium. In 2011, after locating the old distillery site, they began negotiating the purchase of a flat piece of nearby land with access to the Wolf Burn. The land sale was finalized in May of 2012, and construction on the site began in August of that year. The fact that they were already laying down spirit by January, 2013 is almost hard to fathom.
Wolfburn is one of Scotland’s smallest distilleries, producing just 135,000 litres of spirit per annum. By way of comparison, Glenlivet and Glenfiddich each produce more than 50,000 liters every day. Most of the roughly 30-odd distilleries to open in the last two decades have also been relatively small, catering their production towards the growing demand for single malt Scotch whisky, as opposed to blends. Most of Wolfburn’s production is unpeated, but they also distill a lightly peated spirit.
The distillery has an established core range of expressions, including peated and unpeated offerings, all of which are at least 46%, without added colouring or chill filtration. Wolfburn hit a significant milestone in 2023, with the release of their first 10-year-old single malt. Although the 10 Year will be a continuously available expression, the first release will be limited in distribution.
Wolfburn offers tours Monday-Friday, and visitors are encouraged to book ahead. The distillery is rather remote, even by Scottish standards, unless you are driving the North Coast 500 (a route circling the Northern Highlands), or trying to catch a ferry to the Orkneys, It’s likely going to be a bit out of your way. This is a part of Scotland few people see, but it is worth the effort. The coastlines are stunning, and the winding roads are invigorating. And who knows, maybe you’ll even catch sight of a sea-wolf!
This information originally appeared in a blog post created by Evan for KWM's Whisky Calendar.
The original Wolfburn Distillery was built in 1821 by William Smith. It resided just west of Thurso, Caithness. At the time it was the largest operating distillery in the area of Caithness, producing up to 125,000 Litres of spirit annually. The old distillery was operated successfully and was handed down through several generations of the Smith family until 1837. It was run at least once more in 1852 by David Smith, but that only lasted the year. It may have operated sporadically as well in the 1860s but no official records of this have been found. Not much is known about exactly when and why the original finally and completely distillery shut down, but it did, for good at some point in between 1850 and 1872. When the very first ordinance survey of the area was commissioned in 1872 was made, the distillery buildings were listed as ruins. There are no known photographs of the original distillery. All that remains are the ruins and the production records to mark its existence.
In May of 2011, a team went in search of the long lost distillery of Wolfburn. Nothing of the original distillery survived except the cold clean water from the nearby Wolf Burn they used to produce their spirit. The following year, again in May, work began to rebuild what would supplant Old Pulteney as the northernmost mainland distillery. After breaking ground in August of 2012, construction on the new Wolfburn Distillery was completed with impressive speed, and on Robbie Burns Day 2013 (January 25th) spirit began to flow off the stills for the first time.
The new distillery was built in Henderson Park, Thurso by Aurora Brewing, near the same site as the ruins of its previous namesake. It sits just 350 metres from what is now not much more than a pile of rocks. It produces about 135,000 Litres of spirit a year, just slightly more than its namesake did more than 150 years ago. This makes the new distillery very small by Scottish standards where even the tiniest distilleries owned by the big guys still typically produce a million litres of spirit or more per annum.
The owners and still masters focus and going slow and steady when it comes to fermentation and distillation. It has mainly run unpeated spirit off the stills thus far, though they have produced a portion of 10 PPM lightly peated spirit as well since 2014. Maturation-wise, the whisky is aged in a combination of one-third quarter casks, one-third ex-Bourbon barrels or hogsheads, and one-third ex-Oloroso Sherry butts. These casks are kept in one of the two dunnage warehouses on-site.
The Inaugural release of the new Wolfburn single malt happened back in 2016.