SPIRIT of Yorkshire claims to be Yorkshire’s first whisky distillery.

“We are a true field to bottle distillery with traceability on every grain that we grow, mill, mash and distil. We are a small team of dedicated individuals making an amazing product, and an independent business unlike any other in Yorkshire,” they say.

“We started distilling what will be Yorkshire’s first malt whisky in 2016, but waited a year to refine the visitor offering and opened the Pot Still Coffee Shop for tours, teas and events in April 2017.

“The attraction grew from a desire to fill the gap for a premium-quality visitor attraction on the Yorkshire coast and to share the knowledge that we have accrued in building Yorkshire’s first whisky distillery from the ground up, and from grain to glass.

“We welcomed over 16,000 visitors last year, an increase of 63 per cent over the prior year and are forecast to increase this by another 41 per cent to 23,000 this year.

“We won a VisitEngland award for our hour-long distillery tours,” they explain.

Spirit of Yorkshire is in the frame for the Retail, Tourism and Leisure Business of the Year award.

Much of the distillery visitor experience is sensory, from the video that starts the tour, through the smells of the barley and the distilling spirit to the tempting array of home baked cakes in the Pot Still Coffee Shop. For visually-impaired visitors, tour guides bring the distillery to life by describing the scene and detailing every stage of the process so they can visualise the scene. It is planning enhanced tours enabling guests to drill down into the sensory side of whisky production and learn how to nose and taste whisky like a professional.