Three single casks. Three North East artists. One sealed box.

— Ad Gefrin Anglo-Saxon Museum and Whisky Distillery, Wooler, Northumberland —

Ad Gefrin, England’s most northerly whisky distillery, today announces the release of the Crǣft Series — the first Northumbrian English single malt in modern times. The debut release comprises three single casks, each bottled at 48% ABV, non-chill filtered with no added colour.

Every drop begins in the ground. Northumbrian barley, grown by farming families within 25 miles of the stills, and Cheviot water, drawn from a borehole beneath the distillery floor. Ad Gefrin has been distilling here since November 2022, reawakening two hundred years of dormant tradition, one cask at a time. Soil and spirit. The land, made liquid.

In anticipation of a core single malt, and whilst the spirit continues to mature, head distiller Ben Murphy has selected three single casks to showcase how Ad Gefrin single malt is developing.

The three casks that form the debut release each carry a distinct character, shaped by the same provenance but drawn in different directions by wood and time. Cask 23170, matured in an ex-American Single Malt cask, opens with ripe fruit and sweet malt, developing into spearmint and lemon sherbet on the palate. Cask 23215 spent its maturation in an ex-Bourbon cask — the most tropical of the three, with mango and spiced peach on the nose and creamy vanilla and sweet cinnamon spice on the palate. Cask 24492 spent 18 months in an ex-American Single Malt cask before finishing in an Oloroso hogshead, bringing dried fruit, resin and new leather to the nose and sticky toffee pudding and mulled wine spice to the palate.

Ben Murphy, head distiller at Ad Gefrin, commented: “Making whisky is about the meeting of art and science. We know how our distillery works best, what casks we need and how long to ferment for, but the art is in teasing out the deep-rooted Northumbrian character that embodies everything we do at Ad Gefrin.

“These three casks are distinct from each other, showcasing where that art and science can take us. The thing that unites them is the land from which they came and the backbone of sweet malt and rounded fruit character that is showing up in our new make and sustaining through maturation in the warehouse behind our still room.

“It’s a cliché to say we’re excited to release a whisky but for it to be the first legal single malt from Northumbria in 200 years is an incredible thing. We can’t wait to see the bottles out in the world and see how they’re received.”

Each bottle carries label artwork commissioned from a North East artist, each responding to the character of their paired cask: Voirrey Taylor for the Bourbon cask, Luke McTaggart for the American Oak, and Sarah Calavera for the Oloroso Sherry finish.